Wired pushes buttons on Global Warming
I've written similar things before, but like any discussion on global warming I'd like to frame my personal stance. I believe humans have a drastic affect on the environment. From straight pollution to the destruction of habitat to global warming, the existence of man has a significant effect on the world around us. I think we're causing global warming, but I disagree that it's in humanity's best interest to fight it using the currently proposed methodology. I feel there are other concerns to human life that are more important. Disease, war, hunger, and poverty should all take priority over global warming. These are tangible things with easily verifiable statistical results in the longevity of humans.
In my arguments I appear to be a global warming denier. I've mentioned before that global warming is a red herring, and I stand by that assertion, but I also firmly believe that humans are causing it, or at the very least exacerbating it. Yesterday the new Wired was deliverd to our door, and in was an article on how to combat global warming. They obviously framed the article as a straw man, but the article makes a wonderful point in subtext, coincidentally it's the same argument I have made in the past. Give it a read. And go through each of the different sections to see what they surmise as to be the best ways to combat global warming the quickest.
The comments are getting pretty crazy on the wired page. Evangelical environmentalists are up in arms, and they seem to be missing the point. The article is a straw man that is trying to point out what's wrong with the current discussion of climate change. Rather than focusing on man as a part of the world, environmentalists are rallying behind something specious in the grand scheme of perpetual human inhabitation of the Earth. Ecological footprint is the discussion we need to have. Global warming is just an aspect of our ecological footprint, and not even the worst one, but it is being sold as the whole deal.
It does however miss the quickest way to control global warming. Kill off 2/3s of the world's population... they get credit for mentioning the black plague though.
Read the Article at Wired.com
In my arguments I appear to be a global warming denier. I've mentioned before that global warming is a red herring, and I stand by that assertion, but I also firmly believe that humans are causing it, or at the very least exacerbating it. Yesterday the new Wired was deliverd to our door, and in was an article on how to combat global warming. They obviously framed the article as a straw man, but the article makes a wonderful point in subtext, coincidentally it's the same argument I have made in the past. Give it a read. And go through each of the different sections to see what they surmise as to be the best ways to combat global warming the quickest.
The comments are getting pretty crazy on the wired page. Evangelical environmentalists are up in arms, and they seem to be missing the point. The article is a straw man that is trying to point out what's wrong with the current discussion of climate change. Rather than focusing on man as a part of the world, environmentalists are rallying behind something specious in the grand scheme of perpetual human inhabitation of the Earth. Ecological footprint is the discussion we need to have. Global warming is just an aspect of our ecological footprint, and not even the worst one, but it is being sold as the whole deal.
It does however miss the quickest way to control global warming. Kill off 2/3s of the world's population... they get credit for mentioning the black plague though.
Read the Article at Wired.com
I applaud any efforts to take a more carefully considered approach to environmentalism. I am totally for saving the planet, giving our children a planet that is as good as the one we got, etc but I don't think a bunch of knee jerk reactions and media jumping on bandwagons is going to help.
ReplyDeleteAs for your somewhat bloodthirsty solution. We are to an extent carbon fixers. If 2/3 of the population died, who would bury them. If they are not buried you'd have 4 Billion rotting, CO2 releasing, plague spreading piles of organic molecules.
The only way you'd get a carbon reduction through genocide is if you targeted the big polluters, or in other words industrialized nations. Europe, Japan, and US. I don't think that is what you had in mind.
Which is what I got out of the article. I didn't take it wholly seriously, but I applaud it for the reaction its bringing. That's my fundamental concern with global warming, the zealotry with which people cling to the currently proposed solutions.
ReplyDeleteIn a hilarious twist, Joe Godwin came to the same conclusion in our discussions in the actual digg thread, that we could do the most good by wiping industrilized nations off the earth... at least with respect to the planet.
The Wired article is really explaining how to fit the most people on the planet period. Current environmentalism sells global warming as the most dangerous thing facing humanity when it clearly isn't.