“What!?” “Are you out of your mind!?”

This is what Im expecting a lot of people will say when they read my beliefs on global warming:

• Are we experiencing global warming?: YES
• Is it a climate change?: I’ll tell you in 100 years 🙂
• Is the warming caused by us?: nobody knows!
• Should we worry about global warming?: NO
• Should we worry about our effects on the environment?: YES

Seems a bit contradictory doesn’t it?

To explain why I think this way, I’ll need to explain a few things first:

– What is climate: Climate is the weather averaged over a long period of time. The standard averaging period is 30 years.
For more detailed explanations, look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate

– What is science: by observing and experimenting, you gain a better understanding of the universe.

– How does science work in the real world: Scientists need funding(ie money) in order to perform expensive experiments (and earn a living)

– Science funding is hard to get. Scientists have to work really hard to convince companies and governments to pay for experiments.

What are some easy ways to get funding:

• Work on something that can generate mega dollars (eg pharmaceutical research, technology, etc).
• Work on something that could be catastrophic (eg: effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear bombs, pollution, weapons, climate change)

– What is mass media: information that people find interesting.

– And what do we (as a society) find most interesting: disasters (and sex and scandals). If a reporter can find a news story that combines all 3, then they are sitting on a gold mine 🙂

Now, take a look at the following videos, and hopefully all the pieces will start to come together:

httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=iMDi_u0dcig
httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=fr5O1HsTVgA
httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=Io-Tb7vTamY
httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=xzSzItt6h-s

So: it looks like global warming has become a big business (and if you try to stand between global warming advocates and their livelihood, it seems things can get nasty)

The world is getting warmer… but no one knows how much of that is man made.

I’m sure we have been pumping out massive amount of greenhouse gases for longer than just the last 20 years.

And then there was all the soot from burning coal and wood (no one seems to talk about what effect it had in the time up to around 50 years ago). Some say it blocked sunlight (and caused cooling), while others might say it absorbed radiation (so caused warming). Which is it? I’d like to know.

I started down this strange path when I stumbled onto: http://globalwarming.worldwidewarning.net (although I’m not sure I agree with everything on that site).

At the end of the day, I have faith in nature and its ability to cope with what we throw at it. It’s more powerful and unfathomable that any of us can imagine.

So: does it mean we should continue consuming oil like there’s no tomorrow? No: I’ve always tried to live my life in a balanced way, ie create the smallest impact on nature as I can (small cars, switch off the lights, etc).

I also believe that everyone (particularly the merrycans) should try to do the same.

Because we cannot predict what effect we are having on our environment, then its probably better to minimise our impact, rather than to try to measure the extent of the impact, and then if things don’t measure up, run around screaming: “the sky is falling!”

I have a t-shirt that symbolises my beliefs (in a small way): On the front, it has various African animal footprints. On the back, it has 2 small human footprints, with the words: “leave only these”