some countries would be helped first. then others. right now china is modernizing. partially because we trade so much with them. next will be africa and other terrible places like the middle east, provided they can stop being fundamentalist religious nutcases that oppose any sort of social/economic modernization. right now the best thing we can do is trade like crazy with whoever wants to trade with us, even the countries that are pumping out carbon like there is no tomorrow.
some countries develop before others. heavy manufacturing labor moves down. we used to do that stuff here. but now everything is made in china. as they become a more modern economy, cheap labor will leave and move to the next ****ty place. free trade enables this sort of modernization to happen. when an american opposes jobs going overseas or worried about the trade deficit, they are basically trying as hard as they can to kill poor people.
But who cares about earth temperature before or after the human timeframe? 4,000 years is a huge portion of the human timeframe. Global warming is an issue because if affect living humans. Yes, natural processes can also cause global warming and has done so in the past. This is responsible for the extinctions of many species we find in the fossil record. But such a rise now can cause human extinction. Unlike the lower forms, humans can do something to combat extinction. It doesn't matter what the planet is doing. We need to flatten the steepened curve that we have contributed to, thereby lowering the threshold of danger. Do you imagine that the Spaghetti Monster is cleaning up all of our polution? Do you not realize that we are contributing a significant amount to the problem. If you read the IPCC report you would understand. But it would conflict with your politics, so you bury your head in the sand. I do agree. But I favor all prudent measures, rather than all drastic measures. These things are NOT mutually exclusive. Nobody is saying we should forsake everything that contributes to human prosperity in order to remedy global warming. This is an obvious straw man just to cloud the issue. What I'm saying is that where there is an opportunity to change to a cleaner technology we would be fools not to do so. It doesn't require abandoning all other forms of human effort. Tell it to Nootch. Sea level rise will affect him greatly in his lifetime--it already has. I have some empathy for my entire species including those in the future. I realize that you don't grok this concept at all. Nobody has the resources to survive the warming if it continues unabated. You have rich white folks on the brain today. Humasn now have the capacity to destroy their environment, but they also have the capacity to engineer it for the better. There is no better example of Natural Selection than the survival of the smartest. I care about the environment that humans live in. If third-worlders starve because of overpopulation or other problems of their own making, it is their fate, it won't end the species. But global warming affects us all . . . and it can end the species.
you certainly should ignore the climate history of the earth if your agenda is to blame everything on humans. a short-term human-centric point of view is stupid. but we like to think we caused everything. eve ate from the tree of knowledge and we have been destroying the precious garden ever since. everyone loves a "humans are ruining it" story. it is such a great story that it is the first book and basic premise of our nations most powerful book of myths. do you not see how humans love to blame themselves and generate guilt for nothing, so that they have some stupid reason to find salvation? and how can we know that is not happening now. why would we expect the earth to stop changing, given that is has wildly changed pretty much constantly since long before we came along? we should be more surprised if it wasnt changing. crazy me, not trusting the UN sponsored political ipcc. usually the UN can be counted on. sea levels rise and fall, it is the way of the earth. how could you know this? scare mongering. again, the problems is not overpopulation. it is corruption and war and disease. give these poor folks a free capitalist state and a chance at an education and they will not die. you show me a country with people dying from preventable problems and i will show you a country with a corrupt and terrible regime. haiti is a great example. just with tourism they could get along pretty well, but they are not big believers in freedom and democracy. also it seems pretty heartless of you to write of these poor third world folks. perhaps you are racist. racism is of course understandable and perfectly ok, if a bit irrational.
Who said that I wanted to debate anything? That is my opinion and there is no way that anyone will change it. You can try to bait me with all the little barbs that you want. The fact remains GW is a power/money grab by the very people that can't earn a living without reaching into my or any other taxpayers pocket. The reason that it is a fact....................it would disappear tomorrow if it couldn't suck money off of the public teat. I can't recall where I read the report, but it stated that somewhere around 78% of tenured college professors were card carrying lefties. While I am sure that some of the bastions of pinko institutions would skew this number, that would certainly qualify as a seething cauldron, no? I don't know your particular leanings as we have never discussed this before, but the way that you come across would lead me to think that you lean left. Should that not be the case, I do sincerely apologize as that would indeed be a grave insult. Some where along the line of "Your Mama wears combat boots."
So in otherwards, no, you don't do anything to help your fellow man. You would just rather sneer at those who do and second guess their intentions because it makes you feel better about your lack of true compassion. You are the poster child of the stereotypical spoiled Americans you dislike. Complain about problems but don't lift a finger to try and fix it. Anything is better than nothing. Do you think the person recieving the aid gives a damn about intentions? Only self-righteous elitist snobs like you do that. How very defensive of you. You know that you aren't going to ever go out of your way to help anyone you don't know, so this is a way of reconciling the fact to yourself that you are actually more uncaring and apathetic than the people you mock. I'd rather have a country of unfeeling white people who give to others for selfish motivations, than a country of people who want to bitch about problems but feel way too superior to actually try to contribute to the solution. The best thing we can do for poor, oppressed countries is to remove trade barriers? Yes! That will save the woman who is scared that the Taliban is coming to kill her in the middle of the night. Free trade. Why didn't anyone think of this before? Religious fanatics will drop their arms because now they get a better price for their wool exports. Hungry Africans living in hovels can now know that the goods their government exports will not be tarrifed at a non-competetive level. This will make their crops grow faster and eliminate violent local power struggles, and cure their diseases. The corrupt leadership of the third world will see that finally they can import and export freely, and pass the savings down to their oppressed citizens. I don't blame you, if I knew as much about the world as you did, I would just base my arguments around attacking false stereotypes as well.
I don't question the premise that we have entered a phase of global warming. But no one really knows for sure if it is man-made or just another phase of earth's cyclical climate changes. Personally I hope it is man-made. If it is man-made there is something we can do about it; if it is not man-made there is not a friggin thing we can do about it. My approach has always been to cut down on green house gases. If the warming trend is not man-made, we haven't done any harm, and if it is man-made we may have actually done some good. It is a win-win situation.
when did i complain about problems? i am happy to have a little nice global warming. i thought i did my best to express that i am selfish and really do not care if anyone lives or dies, and now i am self righteous? geez, how far do i have to go before i can be acknowledged as the terrible person i am? i am not the one bragging about my charity giving. i was going to address the rest of this, which is all nonsense, but i am kinda drunk and will have to postpone it until later. suffice to say that you are talking crazy. also you are pretentious.
So your saying that concentrated sh#ting all over Earth has little negative affect and is actually beneficial? If everyone lived in Candyland then life would be a breeze. Are you proposing we go to war and establish McUSAs around the globe? I'm sure our economy could handle that, just trade... of course, we trade paper and the other country trades stuff. At least the Military Industrial Complex will be raking in the monopoly money.
