The ice queen got us hot
It is possible that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher started the current human-caused global warming controversy.
She came into office in 1979- one of her ministers-Sir Christopher Tickell- urged her to sound scientific and talk tough at world meetings or summits. She needed credibility, and she knew that most government officials did not know science (she did-she had a degree in chemistry) . She began to raise the alarm every chance she got- but the real motive was her struggle with the nationalized striking coal workers. She and her croneys wanted to switch England over to nuclear power for electricity generation- this would have been a repudiation of coal (and petrol). So she denounced coal burning and warned the world that coal burning emissions would melt the ice caps, poison our air, and ultimately destroy civilization. (Eventually England opted for natural gas for its electrical needs).
In the 1970's no-one talked about a looming human induced global warming danger. Instead, environmentalists were warning everyone about a possible new ice age ( there were real reasons for this concern in the 1970's- the instrument readings and computer models back then did seem to point toward a soon to come ice age. It WAS responsible to think that an ice age was coming- most of our science told us so.
However, the errors that led to this belief have been so well worked out, that we can safely assume that 1. The danger seemed real enough in the 1970's to be legitimately concerned- the mistake was understandable 2. Our current methods are 'good enough' to discount any threat of a new ice age, and we now know enough to be able to trust our knowledge this time around. We were wrong in the 70's, but we are about 98% sure that we are right this time-concerning the ice age issue.
Human induced global warming, enough to cause irreparable harm to the Earth, has been an idea since about 1890. But it was Thatcher who made it current, popular and chic.
The Earth goes through cycles of natural warming and cooling...on the issue of human caused global warming , I am neutral. My environmentalism is not based upon any hatred for the Industrial West or its expansion; it is based upon a love of nature. We can have both an advancing civilization and a pristine ecology, if only we could remove the technical/political bottlenecks. After the wake-up call of the 1973-4 oil embargo, and the oil shocks of 1979, the nation should have embarked upon an radical crash program to develop abundant, cheap, clean energy sources. (We may possess some mass-alternatives already, but these are being kept off the market). Instead, we eventually (s)elected oil barons to be our President and Vice- President. We got the wake-up call, but we hit the snooze button and rolled over, and now we are embroiled in a war in an oil zone that has depleted the treasury and raised the overall risk to our nation.
Talk about myopia and short-term greed run amok...
She came into office in 1979- one of her ministers-Sir Christopher Tickell- urged her to sound scientific and talk tough at world meetings or summits. She needed credibility, and she knew that most government officials did not know science (she did-she had a degree in chemistry) . She began to raise the alarm every chance she got- but the real motive was her struggle with the nationalized striking coal workers. She and her croneys wanted to switch England over to nuclear power for electricity generation- this would have been a repudiation of coal (and petrol). So she denounced coal burning and warned the world that coal burning emissions would melt the ice caps, poison our air, and ultimately destroy civilization. (Eventually England opted for natural gas for its electrical needs).
In the 1970's no-one talked about a looming human induced global warming danger. Instead, environmentalists were warning everyone about a possible new ice age ( there were real reasons for this concern in the 1970's- the instrument readings and computer models back then did seem to point toward a soon to come ice age. It WAS responsible to think that an ice age was coming- most of our science told us so.
However, the errors that led to this belief have been so well worked out, that we can safely assume that 1. The danger seemed real enough in the 1970's to be legitimately concerned- the mistake was understandable 2. Our current methods are 'good enough' to discount any threat of a new ice age, and we now know enough to be able to trust our knowledge this time around. We were wrong in the 70's, but we are about 98% sure that we are right this time-concerning the ice age issue.
Human induced global warming, enough to cause irreparable harm to the Earth, has been an idea since about 1890. But it was Thatcher who made it current, popular and chic.
The Earth goes through cycles of natural warming and cooling...on the issue of human caused global warming , I am neutral. My environmentalism is not based upon any hatred for the Industrial West or its expansion; it is based upon a love of nature. We can have both an advancing civilization and a pristine ecology, if only we could remove the technical/political bottlenecks. After the wake-up call of the 1973-4 oil embargo, and the oil shocks of 1979, the nation should have embarked upon an radical crash program to develop abundant, cheap, clean energy sources. (We may possess some mass-alternatives already, but these are being kept off the market). Instead, we eventually (s)elected oil barons to be our President and Vice- President. We got the wake-up call, but we hit the snooze button and rolled over, and now we are embroiled in a war in an oil zone that has depleted the treasury and raised the overall risk to our nation.
Talk about myopia and short-term greed run amok...
posted by Zero at 9:46 AM
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