Global warming is different from the greenhouse effect.Global temperatures wander all over the place over hundreds or thousands of years.
Also, I like energy usage. Life itself is energy usage. Cutting down on energy usage is like sawing your legs off, or at least wrapping them up in some complex machinery to make them more efficient but less useful.
(, Thu 22 Sep 2005, 19:43, archived)
True......energy's there to be used. But why use more than you need to, when some sources of it are finite? We'll never be sure if the greenhouse effect is real, if all the stuff we emit is harmful, etc. But given the choice of possibly fucking everything up forever or being a bit careful and thinking about what we do with stuff, my choice would be the latter.
(, Thu 22 Sep 2005, 19:53, archived)
"Being careful and thinking" cuts both ways.We could be suspicious of the dubious science and politics of climate change, instead of being suspicious that the world is getting hotter. And as for "using more than we need to", there's no end to the lengths we could go to to use energy more efficiently; but maximising the efficiency of energy use isn't most efficient way to get on with life and do the things we really enjoy. It's a pointless goal. We should have as much energy efficiency as is useful, and no more.
Every time there's a natural disaster, even an earthquake, you'll hear people blaming it on climate change. "God is man's attempt to explain the weather," goes an old bit of graffiti, and it seems to me that global warming has replaced god in this function. People don't seem to get the idea that weather is spontaneous and changable. And I could worry you with any number of made-up scare stories, but that doesn't mean the most prudent thing for you to do would be to wear a tin-foil hat just in case I'm right.
(, Thu 22 Sep 2005, 19:59, archived)
