Discredit climate change all you want, but I'm fairly certain these smokestacks aren't making our air cleaner.
Suddenly, when a hacker in the UK gets a hold of e-mails between leading climate scientists that show an effort to raise fears about global warming through data “editing,” the whole issue is debunked.
You may have heard the term “Climategate” being thrown around over the past week or so, serving as fuel for many conservative politicians to conclude that global warming is a hoax. Yes, the same individuals that kept information away from us so that they could convince us that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were justifiable. Oh, the hypocrisy. Sarah Palin has even requested President Obama to boycott the Climate Summit in Copenhagen due to the Climategate “findings.”
The beauty of Climategate is that the hacked e-mails cover a miniscule amount of data in just one facet of this entire issue. In the end, these are simply numbers from a handful of climate scientists. Let’s even assume temperatures are not rising at the rates shown in many models. What about sustainability? Oil to drive our cars, deliver our products, make our plastics, and conveniently give us our food will eventually run out. What about forests and other ecosystems in which billions of people call home? Developed countries are destroying these habitats at increasing rates so that we can continue to build hardwood floors and furniture for our 3500-square foot homes. Renewable energy and sustainability are very much important issues, and large parts in making our planet a “greener” world.
But climate change is a very real present and future danger. The point is, nothing has emerged this week from this so-called scandal. We are talking about a scientific case that has been built up for decades. Now, to discredit this issue based on a handful of e-mails is simply ridiculous. From a recent Blog on Treehugger.com;
“Which studies were compromised, how? Be specific. Cite papers and data sets. What is the evidence? Where is it? What work is affected? How? Show me the evidence that says so”. It is much easier just to fling muck around than to be specific. Nothing has emerged this week that puts the actual science behind climate change in question at all.”
Climate change skeptics have taken the first climate change conspiracy and have run with it, despite their own lack of conclusive evidence. This is the problem with our divided government and divided nation. There will always be hindrances in our own backyard. It doesn’t matter how much visual evidence, data, or how many reputable scientists you throw at them, climate change skeptics simply want to win. That’s politics. And if politics continue to get in the way of our planet’s best interest, we are going to run out of time.
Tags: climate change, climategate