Thursday, January 18, 2007

Confessions of a Global Warming Sceptic

I've always been a little sceptical of global warming. Particularly the dire and fairly specific predictions about what would result, such as rising oceans. It's been about 20 years. CO2 keeps increasing and the average temperature does seem to be trending a bit upwards. But the oceans? I'm here on the Oregon Coast and frankly I haven't noticed it coming an iota higher up on the beaches.

But on the other hand, I have enough respect for the basically unstable and sensitive balance of the climate that permits humans to populate as much of the planet as they now do. Maybe things will be OK. Maybe, but maybe no. It seems like a silly gamble.

Particularly when the U.S. economy seems unable to produce as much as it consumes, year after year, and we go increasingly in hock to foreigners. Don't get me wrong. Love foreigners. Wonderful folk. But I just don't want to see them own all our assets, which is where we'll end up at the current rate.

So even though I'm not a global warming hawk, I'm a Thomas-Friedman hawk for a mass program to achieve energy self-sufficiency. This is the sort of thing we do. We're the top techno country and this is a techno problem. Let's fix it, be proud of it, and screw the Arabs. Also, maybe we won't melt the Arctic.

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