Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Wyndham
As I showed them these things, I made sure NOT to tell them what to think. Which was important, because I feel so strongly about this. The painfully obvious inconsistencies led them to want to know more...which was my plan. After a week or so of guided research using legitimate online sources, 9/10 of them decided that they believed the evidence suggested our planet was warming...but that it is not man who is causing it.
They decided that it is a good thing to try and save our environment by doing things like recycling, reducing waste, and increasing efficiency in most all things...but they said that it was because it was just the right thing to do. They didn't feel they needed to "save the environment" from some galactic catastrophe.
I was proud of them....I hope they remember it, as they grow up.
|
It sounds to me like they DID grow up!
I generally take the same approach as you do when dealing with these situations at work and socially. For the most part the people I meet will make the logical choices once you cut through the spin and sensationalized narrative they are caught up in. I love it when I can get their critical thinking kickstarted. it really is a wonderful thing.
An easy approach is to get them to discuss something you know is bogus and then feign ignorance so they have to explain the situation to you, while you play dumb and confused. You ask the right questions a naive person would ask, and eventually they spot the conclict and it's like a light goes on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 90503
...lol...A favorite of mine was a volcano in the Philippines that covered up Clark Air Base a few years back (I think that was it) spewed out over a thousand times more pollutants into the atmosphere than man has since the start of the industrial revolution...lol
|
Here's a fun one.... go to central park in NYC with someone who believes man is ruining the earth. Show them the huge grooves carved in the exposed rocks. Ask them if they realize that those grooves were made by boulders the size of buildings being pulverized by a 5 mile thick sheet of ice that slid down from Canada a very short time ago (in relative terms to the age of the earth).
This was before man climbed out of the trees, so how did the climate change so much all by itself? Maybe the climate is supposed to change! Man is pretty arrogant to think that his doings can comare with the destructive power the earth has all by herself.
What are these people going to say when the next supervolcano erupts? Yellowstone park is about due to bury the midwest. And don't get me started about asteroid collisions.
Let us not forget the tons and tons of dust that fall from space onto the earth each year. That stuff is pollution too (even heavy metals!) and over time it increases the mass of the earth and changes the orbit too!
Climate is simply a slow motion weather system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by camaro-dreamer
The problem is that these people think CO2 is a pollutant.
|
Actually, in one of the most wrongheaded decisions of all time, the courts ruled that it IS a pollutant, and killed hundreds of thousands of jobs with the stroke of a pen.