All the Wrong Reasons

I long for clean air, clean water, clean earth and clean food. But I’m not convinced that the globe is warming, at least not beyond historically normal ranges.

If (big IF) this planet is warming, hasn’t this happened before? In my sixth-grade Science class, we learned that our Earth has warmed and cooled many times, over many thousands of years. That year (the newer part of ancient history) we read that the Earth was entering another ice age.

We learned that catastrophic events, like major volcanic eruptions which spew ash into the air, or large comets colliding with the Earth, cause so much dust or ash to enter the atmosphere that sunlight is blocked, causing severe cooling.

Doesn’t pollution in the air shade the Earth, thereby making it not warmer, but cooler, enough to offset the warming that might be caused by trapped greenhouse gasses? How do we know that anything we are doing is causing warming, or that if we stopped doing it, the warming would stop?

The weather channel just reported that our low temperature this morning tied the record low for this day! Also today Minnesota reports blizzard conditions. This is mid-April! How can this be global warming?

How do carbon credits contribute to the solution? Seems like a way for rich people to ease their guilt by paying cash to some big corporation which, in exchange, is supposed to make it all better. And it's a way for the corporation to make a lot of money by selling false peace of mind. Buying carbon credits doesn’t stop polluters from polluting!

They say we should burn less fossil fuel. I agree. We will become less dependent on oil-producing countries that hate us, by using existing forms of free energy, like solar, wind, wave action, or geo-thermal. I look forward to living on a cleaner planet with air that always smells fresh, water that's safe to drink, and in which it is safe to swim, and healthier food grown with composted fertilizers instead of those made with fossil fuels.

For all the wrong reasons, we are doing the right thing.

That's my opinion. What's yours?