As you are aware there are many factors involved in the overall debate of climate change. The emphasis that it is a doomsday scenario and man has created the invocation of hysteria. Climate change is over played and is lent to "nudge" you to believe that if we in the United States drastically change our ways while ceding to the up and coming nations that somehow we will save the planet.
The up and coming industrial nations will not succumb over all to this fallacy and you know this as well, but it will leave us in a worse situation over all. Now when you look at the great strides that we have accomplished in cleaning up our environment in the States you cannot take away the fact that it was still accomplished all the while that car usage increased. I do understand that regulations played a part and technology did as well , but when you look at over all conserving of our resources such as those who like to fish it was not done by the boot on the throat approach, but by those who love to enjoy those resources. The same can be said for those who like to hunt. Over the last decade or so there has been an increase in the population of deer. At the same time that hunting has become vogue once again, it is about husbandry of these resources just as it is when it comes to energy resources. You can still utilize those resources without having to fully eliminate them and still have positive progression.
We are nowhere near the point technologically to move away from fossil fuel based energy. We have made great strides to move in that direction granted we are not there yet. As such you cannot force a society to succumb to reductions in overall standard of living while giving pass to those that are up and coming.
When you factor in the basic historical fact that the earth goes through cycles climatically man's footprint is drastically minimal in the overall scope. Long before the industrial age and the invention of the internal combustion engine the Earth experienced both cooling and warming periods. Take for example something as basic as what a fifth grader learns when studying Native Americans. They learn that Native Americans came to populate North America during the later stages of the Great Ice Age. Migration across the Bering Straits land bridge made possible by reductions in sea levels due to water being trapped in ice, Siberian tribes were able to come to populate this continent. In Earth Science taught to tenth graders the geological features such as Moraines and the formation of the Great Lakes was due to the retreat of the Glaciers that covered the North American Continent during the Great Warming period following the Great Ice Age. When you examine what was taught at one time in Social Studies classes and History classes in our schools the Middle Ages or Dark Ages was a period in time that a Mini Ice Age occurred. In the debate on global climate change many of these things are being left out when taught to children today and has been forgotten by many adults as well.
In the whole debate on climate change the emphasis is always geared toward the blame to be placed on man and the activities of man. No one can deny that man does have a footprint and I am not saying that he does not, but to discount the evidence that other factors have a larger role is to do so with blinders on. When we look at those advocating these theory's one never fully examines some of the reasons behind the principles that they do so. Many people such as the most well known advocate Al Gore are set to make huge financial gains. Others are advocating it so that further restrictions can be placed on those that they deemed as abusers of the planet, or better yet those who have succeeded in a standard of living that may be different from those of other regions. Once again it is the age old theory of punishing those who succeed to reward those who may not have, or class warfare on a global scale.
Factors such as ocean currents, volcanic activity, the effects of the sun, and many other natural occurring activities seem to always be less emphasized by those who would rather, for political gain and agenda orientation, promote that global climate change is primarily caused by mans activity. In the whole debate many like to emphasize short term effects as things over the last twenty years or even century, while discounting the broader evidence that naturally occurring events plays a larger roll over all. Those who like to play up that carbon emissions from things such as automobile usage in the United States forget to mention that the carbon emissions from volcanic eruptions, such as the one that occurred in Iceland just recently introduces higher concentrates of carbon in a shorter time span. Man has no blame when it comes to these occurrences, plate tectonics on the other hand does but that does not fit the agenda so these things can be omitted.
Many of those who are promoting and advocating the transformation of your standard of living out of the desire to "level the playing field" conveniently omit that even though carbon does play a factor in the greenhouse effect that carbon is also essential to the production of oxygen. Many have looked to use food based products as alternative energy resources to move us away from fossil fuels. This is a dangerous path to embark upon for so many reasons be it with corn or through sugar cane. When you examine growing crops for energy you come to realize that it requires if not the same amount of energy output but slightly higher amounts of usage to produce biofuels than it does fossil fuels. You need to factor in the production of fertilizers and the processing procedures to bring it to market. Generally what we call feed corn that is used to feed the livestock is also used in the production of many of the other food stuffs that we consume. The overall footprint to produce these biofuels takes up large swaths of land and consumes large quantities of water that could be used in the production of food stuffs instead of used to produce energy resources that if not subsidized would not be a viable alternative.
According to professor Jack Riley of the University of Nottingham,
"By harvesting the peat bogs for biofuels, we release 30 times more carbon dioxide than will be recouped by burning the biofuel produced." The Global Forest Coalition has warned that,
"Biofuels are killing forests and leading to more global warming, besides taking land away from food crops." and Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has stated that,
"The diversion of land meant for food crops to agro fuel production is a "crime against humanity."
When we look at how we are being nudged in the direction to use Wind and Solar as alternatives it is left out that the overall output of these two alternatives comes with a hefty cost both in land usage, and in the fact that they have to be heavily subsidized by the tax payers while they get smaller percentages of return in energy production per capita. Many nations such as France rely on nuclear energy to meet its needs but in the United States we shy away from this alternative and instead are being pushed toward those I have previously mentioned. Once again it brings to question if we are truly serious about moving away from fossil fuel based energy. Are we doing so in a responsible way that does not only reduce the needs of man to feed the population and those around the world on ever increasingly reductions of food production? Are we doing so in lieu of energy production to appease those that discount the many variables that go into the overall factors of climate change and the ever changing cycles that the climate takes over time? Do we discount the fact that climate changes naturally and goes in cycles? Do we discount the fact that throughout the course of history of this planet that the Earth has naturally adapted and has healed the scars of the many changing time periods that it has experienced both cooling and warming and that it will even with the imprint that man contributes?
We like to believe that man can right all the wrongs and control all the circumstances, but we cannot and some things are even bigger than man. At no time in this whole debate is it mentioned that eventually though natural events that the star we rely on will eventually burn out, man cannot change that from occurring. In turn we should continue to focus on looking for alternatives to energy from fossil based recourses for things such as climate change. Eventually man will have to reach out to the stars if we want to continue to exist.
Without question man does share in the responsibility for the actions that we contribute. Left out of the debate time and again is the fact that many factors need to be included when we examine the overall scope of things that are not always able to be controlled by man. I do feel that we eventually need to move away from our reliance on fossil based products to meet our energy demands. To demand through manipulation and agenda based prerogatives for other reasons should not be the basis for our advancement into the future.
