In light of the extremely inauspicious manner in which the Eagles are starting the 2007 season and the discussion on anthropomorphic global warming (AGW), I figured I’d try to sew them together in a way that makes some sense.
It is established fact that home teams in the NFL tend to win more. About 58% of NFL games are won by the homers. What’s not completely understood is why. Is it home cookin’? Is it the fans? Is it not having to travel? I mean, it’s one thing in Denver, where they have some geological reasons, but for the rest of the league? What’s the deal? One thing we can be fairly sure of, it’s not somebody wearing his lucky drawls on Sunday when the game comes on. But what about the effect of the fans cheering?
Well, I think Global Warming is about the same. We can agree that over the past couple hundred years, the earth has been getting warmer, although as DarkStar correctly points out, we just know it’s getting warmer as long as we’ve been observing; we don’t really have a baseline to see where this lies in a real trend. Anthropomorphic Global Warming, or the idea that global warming is principally attributable to changes that man has made in the environment. To me, that’s like saying that home teams win more because their fans cheer harder. It’s possible, but that means that all the other variables have to be static, or at least controlled. I see a lotta talk about CO2, but not too much about S-U-N, which, I think, would be a major player.
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Heh!! Ave, yours is my absolute favourite sharp mind to read, but I hope you’ll pahdon me if I rely more heavily on the scientists who study these things. Also, I think you started nappin when Gore rolled the cute animation on the relationship between CO2 and SUN.
The sun just gettin hotter ain’t it, mayne.
now when i’m talkin about the sun, i’m talkin more about the variations in the earths orbit and the variations in radiation from the sun. i don’t think the sun is gettin no hotter, but the amount of radiation we get does change. and the sun is THE variable.
see the thing that gets me is that we KNOW there are long cycles of temperature on the earth. some people posit that we’re in a warm period between ice ages. so then it’s really not about saving the earth, which is what we’re being led to believe.
like i said before, i’m all for being more environmentally responsible, but at the end of the day, it’s like eating healthy and getting exercise - at best, you’re only prolonging the inevitable. and nobody ever heard me argue against exercising, but i’m sayin’ - keep it in perspective.
i know we’re basically between ice ages now. have you read up on what happens when ol ma urf decides to flip her magnetic poles? there’s all kinds of theories about.
still there are a number of things we’re very sure of. too much knifeage in the stomach almost assuredly leads to death and too much CO2 in the urr make the planet hotter than we’d prefer.
honestly, the research is overwhelming at this point. GW exists and if we want to prolong a reasonably comfortable existence on planet earth for future (human) generations, then we should start doin somethin about it now. urgent-like.
if your thing is about how the earth will survive whatever calamity, ok, no argument there. life, in some form or another, finds a way.
personally, i never understood “saving the earth” as the chief reason for environmental responsibility wrt GW. screw the earth, i want my great works to be booked out of the public library 500 years from now. but even considering that earth-will-dieee! hype some are trying to push, is it really all that bad?
a few months ago when my doctor scared me into believing i had full on diabetes when i was really barely “pre,” it had the right effect of jolting me into proper action so that i might avoid the “inevitable.” i’m livin a needle-free life due to his trickery. overhype ain’t always all bad, nahmeen. put that in context, too.
p.s. we only really need to keep dodgin big ass meteors an keep this lil blue plate spinnin long enough til mankind learns to effectively terrafarm other planets. then an only then can we release it all to hell.
“a few months ago when my doctor scared me into believing i had full on diabetes when i was really barely “pre,” it had the right effect of jolting me into proper action so that i might avoid the “inevitable.” i’m livin a needle-free life due to his trickery. overhype ain’t always all bad, nahmeen. put that in context, too.”
You’re right. Overhype isn’t always bad. But it IS malpractice…