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How Can Anyone Debate
Global Warming?
I recently watched a television program in which a group of "experts" participated in a contrived debate over global
warming. While two people in the interview said global warming is real, two other men put up strong arguments against it. They said the world's climate is going through a natural cyclical
change. They charged that global warming is a media scare story that cannot be proved.
I found it amazing that the
program was being broadcast to a nation where most people were sweltering in record breaking triple-digit temperatures, their
air conditioners barely keeping up. Many people missed the program altogether because of power failures caused by the extreme
demands for electric energy. Still others were watching from makeshift housing because their homes were destroyed in floods,
hurricanes and tornadoes. While I suspect the presentation was designed to help keep the masses from coming unglued, I had
to wonder if any of the people in that heat really believed the stories spewed from the mouths of the men posing as scientists.
The
arguments against global warming might seem comforting to those unwilling to accept the fact that we are in deep trouble.
Some of us, however, believe the world is overpopulated and that the careless destruction of the environment is causing the breakdown of the world's life support
system. For us, such rhetoric can be compared to pouring sweet honey and strong spice over rotting meat to make it more palatable.
They
blamed the media for "scaring" the public for the sake of a dramatic news story based on nothing. They also blamed such government
agencies as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for issuing constant news stories about global warming and potential storms
and keeping the public unduly alarmed.
I am personally glad the media is finally waking up to this story. I have been
sounding this alarm for more than three years, as have a small number of other "maverick" journalists and environmentalists.
I believe the problem is so serious the future of all life on this planet is at stake.
Our global weather changes have now become so alarming that our usually complacent nightly news networks
are finding it difficult to ignore this story any longer. The alternating global weather patterns, the powerful storms and
the melting ice caps extreme draughts, floods and even the increased numbers of earthquakes
and volcanic activity are signs that something serious is happening to the planet on which we live.
The hurricane Alberto
during the fall of 2000 was a case in point. Do you ever remember a storm going that far north in the Atlantic Ocean, remaining
intact as a "tropical storm," and then circling back to become a hurricane again? I expected it to threaten the U. S. coast
before it ran its deadly course. (Actually this storm's strange movement was an example of the government's HAARP experiments in weather control.)
The changes are affecting everyone.
The planet is hotter, the air is so polluted people are suffering related medical problems. Humans also are facing a variety
of deadly new strains of old diseases like tuberculosis, meningitis, gonorrhea, and measles. We also are looking at unexplained
new killer diseases like AIDS and E.coli. Insects are on a rampage. A scourge of grasshoppers attacked crops that summer
in the southwest. Red ants, a new type of termite that ravages the wood in buildings, and killer bees are invading the states
from the south. Our trees, certain plants, the colts of thoroughbred race horses in Kentucky bluegrass country, and even people
are under attack by a strange new fungal disease
that is showing up everywhere. Drought and floods are damaging farm crops. The ocean levels are rising. Some low-lying islands recently were evacuated because they
were disappearing. Once high priced seafront property is being destroyed by high-speed erosion.
News stories in recent months: Greenland's
ice caps are melting at an amazing rate of about three feet a year. At least four giant ice bergs, each of them so massive
they contain enough water to have an affect on the level of the oceans once they are completely melted, have broken from the
Antarctic ice field. As they float north and enter busy world
shipping lanes, all ship captains must keep a constant vigil so their vessels don't collide with these giant, silent and unlighted
floating objects.
Not so well known is the fact that the Himalayan glaciers, constituting the largest body of ice in
the world apart from the two polar caps, also are melting at an alarmingly rapid rate. Their runoff is affecting the Indus
and Ganges Rivers, whose tributaries carry water to 500 million people on the northern Indian plains.
The ice melt-down is so dramatic, some
people are calculating that within in the next ten years, the long sought Northwest Passage, a natural sea lane around the northern edge of North America, may open to
world shipping.
The heat wave hitting North America is not unique to this continent. It is going on all around the
world. Temperatures have reached record levels in nearly every country. People are dying and many are suffering not only from
the heat, but from the dry weather, loss of crops and severe storms. Many of these storms are generating something rarely
heard of in the past; straight line winds up to 100 miles an hour. These are not tornadoes, but the storms are powerful enough
to do the same kind of damage.
I find it incredible that our television news programs are handling these stories like
they are normal, everyday events. The news people are acting as if all is well. All is not well. The Earth is in its death
throes and we need to be concerned about it.
What can be done? To be realistic, I have to say there is probably nothing
that we can do at this stage. We are still overpopulating. As our population grows, financial wealth expands and new electronic
devices are produced. Our demand for electricity from coal or nuclear-fired generating plants is increasing
expeditiously. We still insist on driving gasoline powered automobiles, moving commerce on diesel powered trucks, trains and
ships, and traveling on jet powered aircraft. Our paper, steel and chemical plants are spewing toxic waste into the atmosphere
at record levels all over the world. While government controls are slowing the pollution down, these plants continue to dump
toxic waste into our air, land, streams and lakes.
The great industrial revolution sparked by such men as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John
D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan seemed right at the time
that it was going on. But big industry exploited our natural resources and thought nothing of dumping toxic waste into our
soil, the air and our lakes and streams. These industrial giants got very rich on their "creativity," but they led us down
a road to disaster. Now we are so used to the mechanized way of life we have generated, we are unwilling to ever go back to
what we had before. And from my perspective, that is the only solution to solving this problem of global warming and the ecological
destruction of our planet. Consequently, we are doomed to failure. The destruction of all life is a real threat.
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