Tautology of the Skeptical Sinner

I saw an Inconvenient Truth, and it was an excellent documentary, well presented and quite terrifying.

The media helpfully let us know each week of some other sign that the planet is warming up.

Those who propose that it is man’s impact on the atmosphere, similar to CFCs on the ozone layer, want us to adopt a radical shift in eco-policies, and they say we need to do it now.

The cost: They don’t talk about the specifics too much, but by getting rid of cheap but dirty energy like coal, the price of energy is going to go up. Guess who pays for that: You. Higher Electricity bills, even higher prices in the Grocery Store, in fact higher prices everywhere - the only thing sure to go down in price is cars - non-hybrid cars that is. Oh, and governments are going to pay for it using your taxes.

Fear is a great motivator, and having the population focusing on this end of days scenario is a good distraction from the other things we ought to be doing.

The reason I’m still skeptical is that we do not have accurate temperature records of the climate changes the earth has been through - we only have the last 250 years… we can draw conclusions based off archeological evidence and historical accounts of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age - but we can’t directly corrolate the impact of the Industrial Revolution and the CO² we’ve pumped into the atmosphere compared to the solar cycles others say is the primary driver of climate change.

Why do most ancient cultures have The Great Flood in their mythos?

I am not a blind skeptic, there is a lot of evidence that man may be heating up the planet… but this planet’s been around a hell of a lot longer than we have, and she’s a tough old bitch.

I’m still on the fence. But if global warming were a stock would you buy or sell. http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/temperature-stock-report/

Then there’s the visual evidence http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/north-pole-ice-melt-460608