Forum Post: Confessions of a climate change skeptic.
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 2, 2012, 2:54 p.m. EST by ShubeLMorgan2
(1088)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The skeptic is me nd here's why: I do not trust "scientific consensus". Why? Here are a few: 1- For fifty years scientific consensus said that pregnant women ought to take Thalidomide. 2- Piltdown man. 3- The Planet Pluto. 4- Let's build nuclear power plants in the heart of major metropolitan areas because nuclear is safe, clean and too cheap to meter. 5- The milky way is the universe.(When I was a kid we were given these old pre WWII textbooks sort of a one volume encyclopaedia in which for example Mussolini was praised - and in the "Astronomy" chapter we were told that the milky way is just so vast it must encompass all that there is). 6- The earth is flat and it is at the center of the universe. 7- According to science Bees can't fly. (Urban legend?) 8- Oh and a big one! With the advent of penicillin it is no longer necessary to make sanitation a priority in hospitals.
Okay, now today's consensus is that human activity is causing climate change. I still am skeptical. I cannot trust my own knowledge and ability to either agree or not agree based on what gets presented and I don't trust scientists (I do trust the scientific method and science as such). But it is now clear as day, loud as an atom bomb, that something is going on with our climate! Being a New yorker I always thought I was a universalist, a citizen of the world but I guess at heart I am a New Yocentric provincialist. It took sea water rushing into our subway system and power plants to wake me up. And I now see damn, a once in a century drought and heat wave in Russia, the same in the US heartland and now this! All within the space of a few months!
It is now so obvious that something is not right that Michael Bloomberg who I dislike has endorsed Obama mainly because the GOP refuses to acknowledge climate change and there is at least hope that a Democratic administration could possibly take this thing seriously! Governor Cuomo, (who is rightly called Governor one percent) also is on board as apparently is the man who nominated Mitt Romney, big loud Chris Christie of New JersePS- my friends frogmanofborneo and fiftyfourfifty have been banned for being too militantly anti racist. Well, OWS is sort of a white poser power trip anyhow....
the drought would have caused a dust bowl if we didn't have modern civilization.
The heat melted the molding around the cooling fan in my car. It was hot!
I'm from Nebraska. The drought was crazy... and less than year since the massive floods here too.
We've had 70 degree Januaries too. The mild winters are nice though.
Climate change!
If Frogman got banned he deserved to get banned. He was practically calling me a racist and a gay-basher because I like Jill Stein. He was probably doing that to a bunch of people. That is not productive in anyway and it is not accurate in anyway to say that to people for such reasons.
Why did fifty get banned? I remember that user having a few good posts.
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Take it down a notch.
Okay, scratch "eighteen wheeler" and type in "Toyota Prius."
Wow! Now you're wishing death on people?
Low. Very low.
Oh come on Trevor! Can't you take a joke? Where's your sense of humor? White People from Nebraska are supposed to be so subtle in the humor department. What happened to you?
Coming here to campaign for Romney like you do you actually are striving to end early many other people's lives, whether you know it or not. I should really be angry at you about that, but I'm not! Instead I shared a little joke with you! So, "get over it.":)
Where have I once campaigned for Romney?
Share the link
Look how you are using race to judge people. Very low. Very low.
Can't you understand that third party voters exist? That they oppose war? Supporting Jill Stein and arguing against users like VQ over drone strikes and war does not make me a Romney supporter.
You have built this weird conspiracy world where anyone who opposes Obama, even if they say over and over again that they oppose all pro-war candidates, the Bush administration, Romney, and so much more, that must mean they are really republicans.
WOW you should write a movie about it. Call it over analyzing the internet and creating conspiracy theories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Anderson
A vote by any progressive minded person for Jill Stein was a vote for Romney and you are here drumming that vote up. Shame on you. Now go fuck yourself, okay you little shit assed narcissist.
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Have any evidence to back up your claim that Trevor attacks Obama because he's black?
Why? Are you a friend of his.?
He attacks obama. Didn;t you get the memo? If you don;t support our Amateur-in-Chief you are a racist!!! Must be cuz he's black, not cuz he's incompetent.
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Yeah, I try to work on my angry but humorous stuff.
Using humor is a good way to avoid being banned. Also putting things in the form of a question can be effective.
Good luck.
So you are NOT a racist, and a gay basher?
No matter why climate change is occurring, we are still required to deal with the consequences. Even if humans didn't cause the phenomenon, we can mitigate it with less fossil fuels.
Excellent sentiment. Gotta pollute less. Period. Who is against polluting less? It ain't a political partisan issue.
Agreed. By many means, whatever comes to hand and is doable.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/4292181
Good to hear you recognize the climate change crises.
I think the shout to the banned compatriot was probably not necessary.
But Peace, Solidarity, And good luck in all your good efforts.
I think when white power racists run roughshod they have to realize there will be a pushback, but I know you don't want to rock your boat too much here, at least until Wednesday.
Ha. I AM with you. Just not as intense perhaps.
ALL the problems we face come from conservative policies. Those same people are the racists, sexists, homophobes, anti immigrant, and so on, and so on.
That is the way I see it.
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Climate correction is an extremely dangerous experiment; so we have global warming, now what? For anyone that is solution minded, our present stance is juvenile, unworthy of even discussion.
We live in very dangerous times. I think at minimum we have to consider means like perhaps sea walls, and use of peridotite, a highly-reactive rock that covers about half the landscape of Oman,
Read more: Scientists Recommend Permanent Method For Carbon Sequestration: Turn CO2 into Rock - Popular Mechanics
This is what I mean; it's not just reducing carbon that I'm talking about - if global warming is an issue we need to think about lowering surface temps.
Apparently your history books didn't contain ANY of the PREVIOUS hurricanes and storms that have hit New York in the past. Weird huh?
http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/html/hazards/storms_hurricanehistory.shtml
Your Michael Bloomberg is ALSO planning to continue hosting the New York Marathon this weekend! Fabulous! All the water and generators and food being diverted to the city for the runners while people in Staten Island are going hungry and cold and without help! Yeah, he's a great judge of priority and facts.
There have been plenty of storms in NY and I have lived through quite a few of them. Did you miss my point? The intensity of this one, the damage that it did coupled with similar highly unusual as happening so close together in time problems like the heat waves and droughts in Russia and the USD heartland that have made food scarcer and more expensive. Any one of these things happening could be coincidental but all three? No, something is very wrong and has to be addressed.
Bloomberg (net worth $22 billion) also wants $ 6 billion from US taxpayers to build a sea wall around NYC. Why? Well it would protect $ 10 billion of his personal assets, Diane Sawyer's condo on Central Park, and Anderson Cooper's house in the Hamptons.
The seawall, along with Federal Guaranteed Flood insurance and disaster relief for $10 million summer homes in Mantoloking, N.J., forces some poor shmo in Nebraska that has never seen the Atlantic Ocean to pay taxes so rich people can have fancy homes on the beach. This is looking out of the 99%?
22 billion? Let him pay for sandy.
Amen.
I agree that the rich should pay much higher taxes than they do. Even Texas oilmen ought to chip in on this one, don't you think so? We're talking tens of thousands in uninhabitable houses and apartments (no heat, electricity or water or completely destroyed houses). And there should be preparations in may other ocean fronting metropolitan areas, because it looks like things like this are not going to be rare events. NO, it's something of a magnitude of WWII ( the effort and expense being needed) and isn't at all just a New York thing.
Why do poor people (or anybody else for that matter) have to be taxed so rich people can have beach homes?
Make no mistake, we are about to take $25 billion from people that can't even afford any vacation and give it to people with $ multi-million summer homes (not their primary residence) on the beach in NJ and Long Island.
You are deliberately ignoring the reality here and as such you insult this forum and me too, so go fuck yourself asshole.
Eight million people live in the City of New York which happens to be a majority minority city which casual tourists might not realize. Twenty-five million live within twenty five miles of NYC's center. Most of them are neither rich nor celebrities. At present much of the infrastructure of this city is trashed. 40,000 of the eight million are now, at the start of the cold weather season, residing in structures that do not have electricity, water or heat. Thousands more who reside in the surrounding suburbs and towns are in the very same situation. Places of employment are destroyed or in such states that it might take weeks or months to restore them and the jobs they represented. This is unprecedented here. Other US cities are at risk of similar catastrophes. NYC and the twenty-five million who live in and near it cannot withstand such events taking place at frequent intervals. This is the situation whether or not Michael Bloomberg is an asshole, which IMO he is. http://mikebloombergarrogantonepercentertwit.blogspot.com/
PS - If taxi drivers have to pay taxes to support Nebraska farmers whose ancestors got the land free from the government to begin with - resulting in their very own food artificially expensive- what's wrong with a little reciprocity?
When Katrina hit New Orleans what got fixed first? The Quarter where the rich folks live, or the the Ninth Ward?
Make the measurement yourself. After all of the Sandy relief efforts where will the money go? To burned out homes in Queens, or $10 million + homes owned by Anderson Cooper in the Hamptons and the vacation homes of the NJ uber wealthy in Mantoloking, Allenhurst, and Rumson?
The farmer in Nebraska (like the guy in Queens) is not asking other taxpayers to foot the bill for their beach house.