From: Michael Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Jan 25 2001 - 11:05:28 MST
denis bider wrote:
>
> Michael Lorry:
>
> > The fact is that there are proposals to seed the oceans
> > with iron to stimulate plankton blooms which seems to
> > be the most effective way to sequester the huge amounts
> > of carbon that some claim we need to get rid of. Such
> > proposals are being ignored by global warming proponents,
> > so it seems to me that they really don't have an interest
> > in solving the problem. Why then would they seek to continue
> > harping on it without fixing it? Follow the money.
>
> I'm not sure about this.
>
> I would think - as a non-expert in these matters - that, if the green people
> ignore the seeding-oceans-with-iron proposition, this might be for entirely
> logical reasons. Their line of thinking might be like this: 'We hurt the
> planet by doing things the consequences of which we do not fully understand.
> Therefore, solving these issues by doing another thing we do not fully
> understand is a bad idea, since it may very well turn out that we will do
> even more damage.' If this is the way they are thinking, I would tend to
> sympathise with them very much.
>
> Croatians have an expression that fits in this situation - "Ne diraj lava
> dok spava." [Don't poke a lion while it sleeps.] If we know that there is a
> realistic possibility that we might cause an ice age, but we are not sure,
> maybe we should refrain from tampering with the planet until we are sure we
> aren't doing ourselves major damage.
>
> I am no expert in climate issues though. Although I too generally have a
> tendency to look for conspiracies, I am just trying to show that in this
> case, there might not be a conspiracy after all.
Calling my statements a 'conspiracy theory' is a bit harsh. People act
in their own self interest, or what they perceive as their own self
interest, even when they think they are being altruistic. Just as global
warming proponents willfully take money from the nuclear industry, and
the anti-nuke crowd takes money from the fossil fuels industry, people
act in their self interest. Just as the anti-nuke crowd opposes the
construction of breeder reactors here in the US for the simple reason
that such reactors would eliminate the problem of accumulating nuclear
waste (and thus they would have to get new jobs and wouldn't have the
waste issue to harp over), those yapping about global warming do so for
very self serving economic reasons, which are irrelevant to whether
there is a real problem or not. Because there is this conflict of
interest, it is very important to acknowledge the potential for
scientific fraud or at least self deception. The fact that parties
promoting the global warming 'problem' are opposed to its most effective
solution (which tests have shown have no bad side effects) indicates
that there is something besides altruism going on here.
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