I don’t think that anyone at this point doubts that the earth is warming.
There are still some who doubt that this warming is man made. A warming Mars is often cited to prove that if both the Earth and Mars are warming at the same time, it can’t be man and must be the sun.
A NASA group recently published findings which attribute the warming trend on Mars to a change in surface reflectivity caused by dust storms. It is NOT due to increased activity from the sun.
At the same time a UN group released the most detailed study to date in which they assign a 90% probability to human factors as the cause for global warming.
This is good news because we can’t control the sun. But we can control our own behavior. We also can’t control the knee-jerk Luddite response of ideological conservatives when the scientific facts don’t happen to support their world view. We can banish them back to the lunatic fringe by electing a President and a Congress in 2008 that will listen to the scientific community and take global warming seriously.
I also think that there is an opportunity for Christians to come together in a new coalition which reflects our responsibility to be stewards of God’s creation and lovers of our neighbors.
“That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men.”
Titus 3:7-8
Global Warming, Sure is nice. Maybe the snow will finally melt.
But Seriously, of all the kooks who are screaming the sky is falling? I really don’t hear constructive solutions. If one more crackpot says Wind, solar, or magic beans Im going to scream.
South in Mackinaw City the village council let a snake oil salesman erect 2 wind generators inside the city Limits. WOW! The people who live near them complain about noise pollution from the blades. I hate them personally because, every day when I drive south what used to be a beautiful view now has these monstrous turbines that look like a cheap stripper shaking here pasteys.
People would not put these things on the rim of the grand canyon, but they did on the Straits of Mackinac. Visual Pollution. Village Morons of Mackinaw.
On Topic, As of now neither wind nor Solar can produce the energy we need. The thieves that are our government are in the pocket of Coal producers and burners, and the environmentalists had, since the early 1980’s, single handedly shut down the development of Nuclear generation. Which is the real answer to stopping Carbon emissions.
So what to do?
There is no doubt to me that we have been in a drought for the last 10 years, what to do?
China is producing more carbon monoxide than the U.S.of A and will more in the future, they never signed the Kyoto agreement.
What to do.
We do what we can, and we keep our eye on Jesus, If Faith brings us Salvation to God, Faith can bring us Salvation for this Planet.
Nothing stays the same, the Earth is a living entity, Constantly in flux. God will either cause it all to end, or he will give us and maybe he already has, the answer to keep the generations going.
Rick,
Prayer is always effective, but prayer without works is empty.
If you doubt that there is a problem, you need to stop reading this blog and spend some time reading the scientific reports. These are NOT a bunch of kooks saying that the sky is falling. These are folks who have spent their lives developing their skills as scientists and the overwhelming majority of them are saying that there is a problem and it is a serious one.
Any global problem that developed over decades is not going to yield to simple solutions.
Some of the things that we CAN do include increasing the efficiency of our automobile fleet. That technology already exists. We just haven’t had the government will to mandate it.
As far as the rest of the solutions, we’re going to see a lot of experimentation to find out what works and what doesn’t work. All of these experiments are going to involve some evaluation of benefit versus cost. You’ve already listed some of the costs associated with wind power. I look out the window every day and see the 300′ towers of the DTE coal plant as well as the twin cooling towers for the Fermi Nuke Plant. When those were built, residents here also had to give up the pristine views that they previously enjoyed.
Finally, we have set a pretty bad example for the rest of the world. It is going to be difficult for us to tell China, for example, that they need to do a better job conserving energy and reducing their carbon emissions when we haven’t taken any steps to do so.
Tom Friedman just published a great column on the global leadership opportunity he feels is out there for the US. We’ve been a bad actor in the eyes of the rest of the world for the past six years. Taking a leadership position in the fight against global warming puts us back on the moral high ground. It is something to really think about.
Jeff