The Boy Who Cried Wolf

I guess that title is not in keeping with the current PC world.  It should be "The Person Who Cried Wolf".  Whatever...

Anyway, last night CNN had 10 Democrat Presidential candidates on for 7 hours to discuss climate change.  Can you imagine?  Needless to say, I didn't watch it.  It would have been too painful.  But I have read several accounts from both sides about the claims, the plans, the terror, and the warnings.  Generally the left, the democrats, the socialists, the communists, the loonies (they are all the same) are trying to make their point by scaring people to death.  It's all about blaming industry and republicans and conservatives as being non-caring, money grubbing neanderthals who don't really give a shit about the rest of mankind.  Simple as that.  And of course on the other side, the right, the republicans, conservatives, libertarians etc. get frustrated by this nonsense so their defense mechanisms go up and they tend to be in the deny mode.  It's like someone accuses you of heinous crimes and you have a tendency to put up a defense that starts with denial.  So both sides are generally wrong.

I don't think you can be a rational human being and not believe that the presence of 7 billion people will NOT have an impact on the planet.  To think otherwise just doesn't make sense.  It's true that there is too much plastic crap everywhere, especially the oceans.  It's true that we seem to be having more severe weather (which is not climate) recently.  Whether that just a natural cycle or not is open to debate.  It's true that there are finite resources on Earth.  It's true that the population (especially in third world countries) is growing rapidly.  It's true that the U.S. does more by a long ways to combat climate change than anyone else and that largely has to do with education and standard of living.  It's true that some traditional technologies are more difficult than others to make cleaner and more acceptable to people who worry about the pollutants that results from their use.  So there are a lot of things that, at least to me, are undeniable.  There are problems and issues that need to be addressed, but they will not be addressed as long as the loonies are voicing outrageous proposals.

So at the risk of sounding extremely rational and with the caveat that I'm not an environmental scientist, I think there are some fundamental things that could be done.  I won't list them here because I've done it previously.  You can read the most recent article here.  You can also go to the search bar for the blog and type in "climate".  You will see several articles on the subject.  And they all say the same thing.  The same thing I'm saying here.  Until the hysteria stops, until the outrageous claims stop, until the zealots stop trying to scare people, nothing will get done.