The Great Global Warming Swindle
We watched this video, The Great Global Warming Swindle, today in the Critical Thinking class; in it, the filmmakers, using innuendo, damn lies and statistics, and arguably fallacious appeals to authority, ignorance, and fear, argue that anthropogenic global warming brought on by an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is, at best, a mistaken conclusion on the part of climatologists, at worst, a conspiracy supported by radical environmentalists, politicians, and self-interested NGOs and researchers eager to keep their funding streams alive.
Frankly, I don’t buy it; while all the experts (and some of them did seem to have fairly weighty scientific pedigrees) in the film proposed that fluctuations in the sun’s radiation is the main cause behind the rise in global temperatures during the end of the 20th century and on into the 21st, I was not at all convinced that the increasing rate of global warming can be explained without the greenhouse effects brought on by all the CO2 human activity has been releasing into the atmosphere over the last century or so.
But it was nice to fantasize for a while that maybe we’re not all doomed by our own hands and that thirty years from now people will look back on concerns about global warming with the same chuckle we currently do over fears of global cooling during the 1970s.
Of course, the downside would be that I couldn’t be nearly so smug about being a cycle commuter as I am now; I think, though, that I’d be willing to trade my holier-than-thou attitude for the assurance that my child—and grandchildren should that come to pass—might possibly still be able to live in a world where there are polar bears in the wild and where 200 million climate refugees aren’t suffering from disease, starvation, and homelessness.
Besides, I’ll still be able to brag about being a cyclist on these grounds: traffic reduction, decreased air pollution, and general overall coolness of two wheels vs. four.
Frankly, I don’t buy it; while all the experts (and some of them did seem to have fairly weighty scientific pedigrees) in the film proposed that fluctuations in the sun’s radiation is the main cause behind the rise in global temperatures during the end of the 20th century and on into the 21st, I was not at all convinced that the increasing rate of global warming can be explained without the greenhouse effects brought on by all the CO2 human activity has been releasing into the atmosphere over the last century or so.
But it was nice to fantasize for a while that maybe we’re not all doomed by our own hands and that thirty years from now people will look back on concerns about global warming with the same chuckle we currently do over fears of global cooling during the 1970s.
Of course, the downside would be that I couldn’t be nearly so smug about being a cycle commuter as I am now; I think, though, that I’d be willing to trade my holier-than-thou attitude for the assurance that my child—and grandchildren should that come to pass—might possibly still be able to live in a world where there are polar bears in the wild and where 200 million climate refugees aren’t suffering from disease, starvation, and homelessness.
Besides, I’ll still be able to brag about being a cyclist on these grounds: traffic reduction, decreased air pollution, and general overall coolness of two wheels vs. four.
posted by Professor Dave at 5:58 PM
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