Pals Defend the Media Curmudgeon

Guest blogger Marilyn Keenan responds to Jiri Nechleba:
“The debates of those with extreme views are getting so tiresome. And, as we all know, the extremists accomplish nothing except debate and deadlocked action.
When I hear either “Global Warming is going to kill us all soon unless we stop it now!” or “Global Warming is just a liberal plot perpetuated by environmental activists to do (….I’m not sure what)!”, I want to scream. I get why each of those extreme views upsets the opposite set. But both views are really beside the point, aren’t they?
I didn’t go to MIT (if that’s what makes you an expert on what really matters in life), but it seems pretty apparent to me that our air is less clean than it was 100,000 years ago—or 10,000 years ago—or when I was born. Our waters are more toxic than they used to be. Our ozone layer is less healthy than it once was. The amount of de-forestation on our planet, for whatever purposes, is not a good thing. Pumping increasing amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere cannot possibly be good for us or our forests or plant or animal life. Increased chemical run-off or dumping waste into our waters can’t be good either.
These, among others, are the points that matter. Whether or not the extreme intellectual elite agree on Global Warming (or AGW or whatever the new I-know-more-than-you-term is) is not even interesting to most of us. I think most of us can agree that these other things are what really need to be addressed in an intelligent, practical, useful manner. But while the extremists rule the debate, practical minds can’t even hope to solve real problems. The same goes for health care reform, financial reform, and every other major issue that affects all of us, but that gets co-opted by the extremes.
And I don’t even care if weathermen are dumb. Or if we even have weathermen. I’d be happy to read a scroll, listen to a voiceover, and see some diagrams if the weather information would just be accurate only 4 or 5 days out. And as for news “readers” and cable he-said-she-said “robots,” I’ve had more than enough of them. Let’s throw them all out—-along with all the extremists on both ends of the spectrum.
Let’s just fix real problems for real people in ways that really work. These intellectual and extremist debates are getting us nowhere.”
Guest blogger Chris Warner also responds to Jiri Nechleba:
“I knew your calling a group of people dumb was going to incite a response.
I am impressed with the apparent credibility of your respondent. His #1 statement that “The world has had significantly larger climate swings in the last 5,000, 10,000, and 100,000 years that we have seen recently” must consider that those changes were not of our making, while the current concern focuses on human contribution to atmospheric gases such as CO2, SO2 and NO2 that far exceed their normal ranges for at least the last 650,000 years. Changes in the climate on earth are inevitable. What is disturbing is continued denial of the fact that we are causing a change without taking responsibility for short sighted actions with long term negative effects.
I am not an MIT scientist, but have read and listened to more than a few experts that mostly say there has never before been any war, crisis, pandemic, etc. that remotely compares in complexity to the all-inclusive climate crisis. Human growth and development is accelerating as thousands of species of flora and fauna are going extinct. There is only one sky for our whole world to share. A big difference is that with exponential scientific growth, we now know better. I don’t understand how anyone, much less an educated person could deny the evidence that our all consuming 20th century fossil fuel driven lifestyle is unsustainable.
He must have an interest in maintaining business as usual. Making money requires making tough decisions, which requires denial. Who were the losers for him to win? In sustainable models, we all win.”