What if Global Warming Was Made Up?

I’ve been driving my wife to work lately and as such I turn on the radio while the kiddo naps in the back. I get bored of the music easily and so I’ve been checking out talk radio. One of the stations I’ve been listening to is a ‘conservative talk’ station. I can tell they are conservative because anytime they’ve mentioned a Democrats name or the topics of Global Warming or Immigration it’s been prefaced by negative adjectives. They call people who believe the stuff all kinds of names, which makes me wonder if listening is good for my self-esteem. Anyways, that’s not the point of this post, rather, I’m just wondering why they are so opposed to Global Warming.

Apparently, and I’m fine with stipulating they are right for a bit, there are plenty of scientist our there that know that Global Warming is not a man-made phenomena and it probably doesn’t exist at all. They say it’s a political ploy made up by Liberals and environmentalist. I guess I’m just trying to figure out why.

So, let’s just assume for a moment that Global Warming doesn’t really exist. All that exists is a couple thousand slide Powerpoint presentation by a former Vice-President. What do we do now?

I still think we should drive fuel efficient cars. I still think we should consider the impact our choice of food and consumer choices have on the environment. I still think 20% of the world’s population should not be consuming 80% of it’s resources. I still think the rainforest, the Alaskan landscape, and other feats of nature are beautiful the way they are and we should seek to preserve them. I still think if our tax dollars are going to build life-destroying weapons of war then some of the tax dollars should also go to preserving God’s green earth.

My motivation to be a good steward of this planet and to be environmentally friendly has never been a reaction to the horrors of global warming, it’s been a reaction to the biblical mandate to care for this planet. I don’t see any scientist opinion changing my lifestyle any time soon. All that being said, I wonder why people are so adamant about refuting global warming. Honestly, the only reason I could see for wanting to deny the existence of global warming is to feel less guilt about my consumeristic selfish lifestyle (If I’m wrong please enlighten me).

18 thoughts on “What if Global Warming Was Made Up?”

  1. each time I pass through a nearby city, past the industrial section with stacks belching massive clouds of chemical waste, the same thought goes through my mind… when God asked us to look after the place, this cannot be what he had in mind.

  2. Good post…

    As for making it up…
    I have been trying to figure out for awhile why anyone would make up a problem such as global warming.

    No one has been able to give me a good reason why the “liberals” would want to make up such a thing.

  3. Well put, Ariah.

    I think a lot of the problem is that people like to lump everything their opponents say together and disbelieve all of it. For example, “liberals” are pro-choice, dismissive of creationism, and they believe in this global warming thing. If you are one of the pro-life, intelligent design people, it’s easy to conclude that global warming MUST be false.

    But as the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

  4. each time I pass through a nearby city, past the industrial section with stacks belching massive clouds of chemical waste, the same thought goes through my mind

    I can’t resist responding to the irony in this comment. Without the industrial section in your city you would not have a car to drive in, a road to drive on, likely a house to live in comfortably and a computer to use to get on the Internet and complain about it. 🙂

    God told us to be responsible when managing the environment, not be idiots about it. I’ll take people before the environment any day; tell people in Africa that they can’t have power plants, roads, and “filthy industrial sections” in their cities…see how they like your environmentalism then.

  5. I have been trying to figure out for awhile why anyone would make up a problem such as global warming.

    You guys are so cute when you are so innocent 🙂

    Follow the money:

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21756222/
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3022274.ece
    http://riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/03/al_gores_inconv.html
    http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22663

    I am sure it’s all a conservative conspiracy theory that Cheney and Halliburton created up to smear Gore’s impeccable name.

  6. Virgil, I would think that pumping chemicals into the air and the water would not be good for the people who live near it. I think Wilsonian’s comment wasn’t aimed to choose the environment over people, but a call to something better…a call to redemption.
    I really like the point that Ariah made though. We should be doing things to pull back in our consumption. I am really excited because starting in January my brother in law and his wife are going to have a “buy nothing” year. Woot! Can’t wait to read the blog.

  7. Jamie, actually I agree with everything you said, but inadvertently the environment does become more important than people…the choice is always forced on us, and nobody wants to tackle the difficult questions or give honest answers to them. How do you propose we make medicine? Life-saving plastics? Computers? Electricity? Deliveries of life-saving food, drugs, tools? Ambulances? Hospitals? Water purifiers? Clean food? Refrigerators? Air conditioners? Heaters? Propane? Stoves and furnaces? Diesel generators? Paper to print Bibles on?

    We are not choosing environment over people?

    All these things which benefit people are made in those “filthy” industrial areas of our cities (which are actually not filthy at all). As you can see, we are essentially advocating going back to the stone age, because none of those life saving stuff can be made without some sort of pollution or discharge into the environment.

    The answer is not to throw guilt at those people who are making all our lives better. But that’s what global warming advocates do every day.

  8. People who care about other people and the environment do not jump so quickly to conclusions based on computers and promoted by governments. They do not so quickly jump on the totalitarian band-wagon to control all human energy use. They do not so malisciously label anyone who dares to question their collectivist pseudo science.

    The global warming crowd aren’t the good people. They are the misanthropic people. They are the anti-industrial and anti-capitalism people. They are the anti-liberty people. They are filled with contempt for humans, not love for the planet. They think consensus trumps science and condescending psychobabble wins debates.

    Anthropogenic Global Warming is a myth engineered by those who enjoy the myth. Basic science does not support its basic premises. The arguments supporting it keep being replaced, as they are struck down, by new and sillier arguments. This is a sign of dishonesty. Their latest is the “tipping point” alarm: we are wrong, but any minute now we will be right.

  9. @Virgil: Thanks again for stopping by. I hear what your saying about developing countries, I should have mentioned that in my post. I agree that any country who hasn’t had their own industrial revolution might not be in a place to develop more eco-friendly ways of production. However, if the companies building in the developing world are the multi-national corporations who are profiting the developing world, then they probably have the resources to cut their carbon emissions.
    Your point is well taken.

    @John: I haven’t been deeply read on the global warming arguments like you obviously have. I’m just having a hard time understanding what motivations you would have for insisting it’s all lies.

  10. Virgil, I don’t doubt that there are people out there exploiting the cause–I’m sure of it. I would argue that we can do with a lot less without returning to the stone age as well. We do benefit greatly from plastics and from many other “things,” but we also have far more stuff at the expense of out brothers and sisters all around the world.
    Don’t think that you paid completely for something at the checkout counter–often there is an external cost that someone else or the environment or usually a combination of both has paid too.
    We are far too complacent in our luxurious lives to really grasp what we are doing to the rest of the world. Voluntarily simplifying our lives is a powerful step.
    I don’t know if one day there will be a point where the environment truly “tips”–I don’t care. What I care about is curbing our insatiable need for stuff, and bringing the rest of the world into a healthy standard of living. They do need more; we do need less.

  11. The answer is not to throw guilt at those people who are making all our lives better.

    Virgil, I completely agree. It is a difficult question…what DO we do with the problems we create? You seem to defend humans as a whole saying that we haven’t really caused that much of a problem on earth…please correct me if I misunderstood. I don’t think that anyone who’s carefully looked at the earth today compared to hundreds of years ago would say that we are not causing a fair amount of planet devastation. Gosh, look at the city where you grew up, for that matter, are not the effects of industrial mankind not quite evident? Again, I may have mistaken your defense.

    I’m like Ariah, I’m not as motivated by “the horrors of global warming,” but by the responsibility I have to not destroy God’s creation. Now, I think you bring up a good point. Everyone is a hypocrite to some extent in this issue. Those who claim they don’t care about the effects of industry would not want one a block away, and those who don’t recycle would be horrified if the city proposed a dump site a block away. I’m a hypocrite as well, though. When I recycle and bike to work, I have a fish tank consuming energy in my patient waiting room. When I live in a small apartment and try to live simply with my wife, I remember that I love so many conveniences such as the laptop I now type on, and the cell phone I carry.

    Although I’m fascinated with the Amish lifestyle, I don’t ask that everyone “go back to the stone age.” I do think that many of the things we can’t live without today, we lived without yesterday. And I think we would be better off in many ways to be away from the technology that does everything for us with the push of a button. We live in a society where its children are becoming more and more unaware of what hard work is. There are many great things technology has done for us, and there are many problems…many of which have been caused by our complete disregard for the environment.

    So the answer isn’t to throw guilt on people. Agreed. What IS the answer, though? Until I figure out what the political or industrial nation should do, I’m going to keep searching for the plank in my own eye. I’m going to keep searching for ways to consume less energy, discard less waste, and live simply so that others may simply live.

    And I won’t really worry all that much about becoming toast. 🙂

  12. You guys are so cute when you are so innocent 🙂

    Right…

    I am sure that 30 years ago Al Gore looked around and said, “How can I make the most money?”

    And then he thought, “I know… I can start a revolution around global warming – it will make me rich. I mean, no one knows about it right now, and no one is really going to believe me yet. But in 30 years I will make millions off of it.”

    Virgil… you do know that the idea of global warming is not a new one, right? And you do know that Al Gore has talked/ranted about global warming since he was in college, right?

  13. Jamie, actually I agree with everything you said, but inadvertently the environment does become more important than people…the choice is always forced on us, and nobody wants to tackle the difficult questions or give honest answers to them. How do you propose we make medicine? Life-saving plastics? Computers? Electricity? Deliveries of life-saving food, drugs, tools? Ambulances? Hospitals? Water purifiers? Clean food? Refrigerators? Air conditioners? Heaters? Propane? Stoves and furnaces? Diesel generators? Paper to print Bibles on?

    We are not choosing environment over people?

    I haven’t heard anyone advocating not making medicine, life-saving plastics etc. What I’ve heard is that we recycle these life saving plastics when they no longer serve their purpose, that we research ways of creating and recycling computers that do not put toxic chemicals into places where people may ingest them in the future, that we make electricity in such a way that we do not contribute to growing air pollution problems like smog and the like.

    The idea isn’t to choose the environment over people, but to choose the environment for people, in which case the choice is, do we utilize our resources in such a way that right now we get the maximum return at risk of running out, or of contaminating those resources such that we will not be able to use it in the future, or do we utilize our resources in such a way that we may not be getting maximum return right now, but we are surer of the availability and usability of our resources in the future.

  14. Richard, nobody is against recycling or against clean electricity. The problem is that environmentalist extremists only point out problems and are against any reasonable solution. They want clean electricity but they oppose nuclear plants. A nuke plant hasn’t been built in this country in decades, so instead cities have to build coal plants to keep up with the demand, which leads to more pollution.

    When you get down to addressing the issues in detail, it’s much more complex than “let’s make the world clean!”

    You can’t win when a no-win scenario is created by extremists. People need gasoline, electricity, plastics…and you can’t get them all from recycling and from old computers. General statements and stated desires are not good enough.

  15. Ariah writes:

    “I’m just having a hard time understanding what motivations you would have for insisting it’s all lies.”

    I haven’t actually said that it is all lies. I have said it is wishful (collectivist) thinking, pseudo-science, and debate cheating. But I am sure there are liars on both sides of the debate.

    As for the science, it simply isn’t there. Do we label as a liar some self-rightious nature lover who has accepted every word of the global-warming myth because it is her policy to believe and parrot ANY story about Moderns Man’s Inhumanity to the Poor Planet, and her government-educated policy to believe any government pronouncement that supports her prejudice?

    I would say yes, it is lying to support that much draconian legislation based on that much non-science, and to smear with psychobabble anyone who dares to question. If we don’t call it lying, then what do we call it? Jumping on that band-wagon is far more than mere naivity, though I certainly grant that there are innocents who simply haven’t done any homework on the subject and believe it all because they are merely intellectually irresponsible.

    That’s not quite lying, but it comes close. When you pretend you know what you merely like to believe, the effect is the same as lying.

  16. Dave writes:

    “No one has been able to give me a good reason why the “liberals” would want to make up such a thing.”

    I would say there are 2 good answers:

    Take a look at the totalitarian “solutions” to the alleged problem and you will see that it is drawing power-lusters to the cause like flies to garbage. Vast numbers of politicos and bureacrats are gearing up to control the whole world in the name of saving it from mankind. Fortunes are going to be made by zealous bullies with yet another excuse to attack and harness all humans on a world wide basis. In the name of doing good, as usual.

    But there is another type of promoter of this pseudo-science who is simply misanthropic. They are attracted to any theory that condemns human creativity and progress. They hate the rich, the comfortable, the creative, the free. They are the sort who once hated dancing and singing, who hated the telephone and radio, who hate pleasure, sex and the human body, who promote the doctrain of original sin, population control, the sadistic notion that humans are a virus on the earth and images of a nailed-up human body as the symbol of what is good.

    I suspect envy is what drives them. Don’t underestimate them. They have been a powerful force through the centuries. There really are humans who just plain despise humanity.

    Many of the power-lusters and misanthropes call themselves “liberals”. They stole the word. It once meant free (from “liberty”). Now it means robbing the rich to buy votes from the poor, forcing government “education” on other peoples’ children, taking over all health care and nutrition. It means a world where self-rightious parasitic misanthropes keep finding endless excuses (needs) to rule others by force, while riding around in limousines pretending they care about the world using an extortion-racket called taxation to fund their compassion. If they get their way, it will mean violent control over all human energy use, a truly totalitarian insanity.

    So, global warming hysteria appeals to most liberals. Conservatives prefer dropping bombs on foreigners, a very significant difference. According to them.

  17. Richard, nobody is against recycling or against clean electricity. The problem is that environmentalist extremists only point out problems and are against any reasonable solution.

    Thus far no one here has been an extremist. I will definitely be willing to say, and I think you would be too, that extremism on either side of this argument is untenable. I think that focusing on the extremes only serves to polarize people and only benefits politicians who want us, no matter what “side” we are on to think that the “other side” is so bad that our votes are guaranteed.

    I would propose that instead of focusing on extremism, and how wrong the other side is, that we focus on providing constructive answers that take what’s right on each side to make a better whole.

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