One thing that always amazes me about skeptics of human environmental impact is their emphasis on individual phenomena. I think the mainstream media is guilty of this too.
Fact: humans have had overwhelming impact on many of the most important resource cycles on the planet:
Fishing
Forests
Clean water
Clean air
Energy
Plant and animal species (not just extinction, but also the billions of factory farmed animals and the massive food chains they rely on).
Land area use via agriculture.
Hello! How can we not be affecting global cycles?
Frankly, it doesn't matter if global warming is "true" or not: we can never test it thoroughly enough to convince a committed skeptic (note the previous posts re: the ozone layer!).
If its not global warming, it will be depletion or disruption of another cycle. Its time to monitor and limit our impact, remembering we are completely reliant on the resources and systems of unknown complexity which make up our environment.
Environmental change and degredation is real and all around us (heard of the Riverina and Murray Darling Basin? The Sahara desert (used to be forests): we have an impact, we can never be sure what that impact is exactly (that is the nature of complex systems), but clearly we are at the mercy of these changes and don't want to be pushing them faster than we need to!
I'd hate to be having to tell my kids about how we suspected we were wrecking the planet, but we couldn't be certain, so we didn't bother doing anything!
Fact: humans have had overwhelming impact on many of the most important resource cycles on the planet:
Fishing
Forests
Clean water
Clean air
Energy
Plant and animal species (not just extinction, but also the billions of factory farmed animals and the massive food chains they rely on).
Land area use via agriculture.
Hello! How can we not be affecting global cycles?
Frankly, it doesn't matter if global warming is "true" or not: we can never test it thoroughly enough to convince a committed skeptic (note the previous posts re: the ozone layer!).
If its not global warming, it will be depletion or disruption of another cycle. Its time to monitor and limit our impact, remembering we are completely reliant on the resources and systems of unknown complexity which make up our environment.
Environmental change and degredation is real and all around us (heard of the Riverina and Murray Darling Basin? The Sahara desert (used to be forests): we have an impact, we can never be sure what that impact is exactly (that is the nature of complex systems), but clearly we are at the mercy of these changes and don't want to be pushing them faster than we need to!
I'd hate to be having to tell my kids about how we suspected we were wrecking the planet, but we couldn't be certain, so we didn't bother doing anything!