Global warming

Today is Blog Action Day and the subject is Climate Change so let's talk about it.

But immediately There is a little problem, even as a kid I always wanted to know the why and what on any giving subject, if a teacher at school said something I wanted proof. Some teachers liked this, some hated it. This might be a symptom of autism (a really cool one) or maybe I'm just a smart ass.

And with global warming there is evidence that it is happening and that humans are involved in it. But we just don't know how, when somebody says that the Netherlands will flood in 50 years he is really saying that the worst case scenario is that we will drown over here, not that it will definitely happen (the chances for these worst case scenarios are very small). Saying that everything is allright and that there is nothing going on is on the other hand just lying and stupid.

So on one side of the debate people are exaggerating and the other side is lying, so what now. We could try to read the research and make up our own mind but to be honest the science involved is way beyond my understanding. So from now on we enter the realm of my personal interpretation and opinion, feel free to disagree.
The climate is changing and we are partially to blame but the climate is always changing and it doesn't always make sense ,apparently there was a miniature ice age a few hundred years ago which provided some spectacular winters over here, you can see paintings of this on a lot of Dutch Christmas cards.
I don't believe that the climate will change dramatically within the next ten years or that it is to late. Should we do something about this, yes but we should be reasonable about it and make sure that what we do actually helps and that it is not something we do to make us feel better. This might sound cynical but green has become one of the biggest marketing tools of the last few years.

For example, here in the Netherlands there is this hype for green electricity, pay a bit more and a certain amount of your electricity will be generated by the sun and the wind. Sounds great but how will they do that, my power comes trough the same wire as that of my neighbour so we get the same amount of green power but my neighbour pays more so he can feel good about doing something for the planet.

There are loads of these examples, flying around the world and buying a piece of rainforest to feel good, the trees need about 40 years to undo your damage and sometimes the trees don't exist, or are sold several times or cut down for economical reasons.

Hybrid cars are just as good/bad as a good diesel car, on a simular note ethanol isn't the answer to.

A lot of these easy but sometimes expensive solutions are a marketing trick to sell to you the feeling of doing something good. Global warming is a serous and complex issue, it can not be solved by one liners in adds.

I don't have all the answers but I will keep looking for them and in the meantime I will do the little things like using environment friendly light bulbs, don't keep the heater on all day, reuse my plastic bottles and just generally be sensible about this.

Source
Global Warming
Ethanol in Cars