Thursday, April 12, 2007

Warming could spark N. American water scramble: U.N.





Climate change could diminish North American water supplies and trigger disputes between the United States and Canada over water reserves already stressed by industry and agriculture, U.N. experts said on Wednesday.

More heat waves like those that killed more than 100 people in the United States in 2006, storms like the killer hurricanes that struck the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 and wildfires are likely in North America as temperatures rise, according to a new report that provided regional details on a U.N. climate panel study on global warming issued in Brussels on April 6.


We deride Holocaust deniers. We poke merciless fun at Creationists. Yet we tolerate those who flaunt the depths of their incomprehension by claiming that anthropogenic climate change is some sort of fiction fabricated by political extremists.

Perhaps some of us can afford to be be loftily contrarian, a stance to which Michael Crichton aspired with "State of Fear." Or maybe some of us are just utterly and contemptibly stupid.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recently wrote a letter to a prominent British Journalist (who denies global warming) stating the same thing.
She had gone to a symposium of "scientists" that did not think global warming existed.
I told her it was easy to find the symposium. It was down the hall from the creationists conference, and right next to the "Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy" meeting.
The symposium was actually held in the room where Cigarettes are not harmful group used to meet. It made sense to use this room as so many in the cigarette group are also in the Global warming symposium.

Stan

Chris said...

Since the science behind global warming is easily understandable by anyone with a high school level of education, I think it's fair to question the motives of global warming skeptics.

Anonymous said...

Great post, Mac. But if God didn't create the earth 6,000 years ago, then can you tell me who left all the dinosaur fossils lying around for us to find?

Mac said...

Chris--

More often than not, the motives of global warming "skeptics" can be traced to political bias. Which is arguably scarier than climate change itself.

I'm *fed up* with global warming deniers. Don't like Al Gore? Fine. But don't discard the reality of human-caused climate change because of political whim.

Anonymous said...

Political bias is certainly part of it. But people (especially in the US) are very attached to buying and selling their global-warming-causing creature comforts.

It takes a lot of strength and humility to face this crisis, and one's own inevitable part in it. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of people just aren't up to the task.