Sociology Talk

Guest

Two positons on "global warming...one rational, the other simply "feel
goodism." The F-G first from that noted and highly respected scientist,
Sheryl Crow:

"It's been well over a week since our little run in with the adviser to
our president. I am just now processing all that took place during the last
few days of the Stop Global Warming College tour and a few concerns still
hang heavy on my mind and heart.

First, I am deeply concerned over where we are as a nation. We are so
blessed to live in a country where we enjoy so many rights that other
countries cannot even begin to imagine. However, what terrifies me is not
what we are ignoring about the state of our planet but the fact that we seem
to have lost touch with our connection to the earth. We have risen to great
heights of arrogance in our refusal to acknowledge that the earth is
changing. We hold steadfast to our belief that nothing can happen to us as a
people. We get into our oversized, war-machine-like vehicles, get on our
cell phones and blackberries, and avoid having human contact all day long."

Now a truly eminent scientist's viewpoint from Reid A. Bryson. He holds the
30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education.
Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin
Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric
Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s
Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the
United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize
“outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the
environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other
publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as
the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

What does he think of global warming?

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of
course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the
Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not
because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various
times, and so something was making it change in the past. Before there were
enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody
was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”
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I'll take Reid's word over Crow's any day. It appears when they did that
masectomy, they also did a bit of a lobotomy on the old Crow.

Dennis