Originally Posted By: Notes Norton
I don't remember the ice age thing. Perhaps I never paid attention feeling it was "the sky is falling" extremism. I never built a bomb shelter or joined the Foxfire group of radicals either.

And as a moderate (slightly left on social issues, slightly right on fiscal issues) I tend to ignore press from both extremes. I don't get my news anywhere more left than The Atlantic or any more right than The Hill. Mostly I stay in the mainstream section in the middle taking the "Shows Liberal" and "Shows Conservative" press with a grain of salt. NPR, Washington Post, BBC, New York Times, AP, and Reuters work best for me, and since I don't watch TV, NBC, CBS, CNN, and ABC are out.



And that means both Fox and MSNBC are too radical for me as they fall outside the center area of this diagram. According to Politifact, Fox gets it 100% true 8% of the time, MSNBC gets 9%. Both get from "Half True" to "Pants On Fire" well over 70% of the time. So neither is news but instead propaganda.

Back on topic of hurricanes and other weather disasters...

Since almost all of the peer-reviewed, published climatologists agree that humans are probably at fault for the warming, and at least extreme contributors to it, I figure they are correct. After all science gave us the Internet, space flight, smart phones, and computers. Sure they can be wrong, but it's the current best bet. Remember they told us smoking was bad while the merchants of doubt told us 9 out of 10 doctors recommend Lucky Strike cigarettes.

And yes I know we might be screwed anyway. But sooner or later I'm going to die, I'm definitely and sadly screwed out of living forever.

I don't take the attitude that I may as well smoke, hang glide, drive recklessly, pick fights in bars with people bigger than me, use power tools without eye/ear protection, eat nothing but junk food because it tastes so good, skin dive with sharks, and so on. Instead I take care of myself so I can live as long as I can in a healthful state. It just makes sense to me. There is plenty of fun I can have with minimal risk.

And if the Earth is screwed and going to die anyway, I feel the same way, that I should treat it right and keep it healthy as long as I can, even if my contribution is in the great scheme of things very small.

And no, I don't believe switching from a coal and oil based energy system to a renewable will ruin the economy anymore than any other changes have. Sure it will put some out of work, and others to work, but that happened with the printing press, automobile, cotton gin, computer, transistor, sewing machine, nuclear reactor, television, supermarkets, department stores, e-tailers, and thousands of other changes.

Solar, wind, battery, and other industries will prosper as coal (which is dying due to market forces anyway) fades away.

The so-called NeoCons rallied around the invasion of Iraq because there was a 1% chance they were developing nukes, but dismiss the 97% chance that we are causing climate change that could mean the end of human life in a future generation. I personally don't get it.

I read a few university studies that say if we all paint our roofs white, it will buy 100 years. That would 'create' plenty of jobs (my roof is white BTW).

And I believe in both the private sector and the government. But I don't believe either one is 100% the way to go. Some things work better via the government, like fire, police, and military, and other things work better in the private sector.

Of course we in the US have been giving billions of dollars in tax breaks and outright corporate welfare to the private sector, making large segments no longer private, but instead quasi-government, and that's not free market economics. Too many times Privatization is a disguise for Profitization.

So the fact remains that the odds are that human activities are at least contributing to the extreme weather conditions, melting permafrost/ice caps, sea level rising, warming oceans, and so on.

And it's undeniable that human pollution is adversely affecting our collective health. So I feel it's my responsibility to do what I can to at least slow down those effects. And I'm not naive enough to assume that everyone else is going to help. But I am going to do my part and others are also doing theirs.

I survived Irma as I have done over a dozen others. Living in Florida I pay attention to these storms, and it does seem like they are getting worse and the truly devastating are coming more frequently - but that's not scientific - only my observation.

But if the vast majority of climatologists are correct, our habits are putting people like myself and millions of others at greater risk of extreme hardship. I for one don't want to contribute to that.

But that's my personal viewpoint, and everybody has a right to their own.

Notes

Thanks for posting such a reasonable, non-partisan take on this issue! Some folks decide what they believe and then find sources to back them up. I, like you, prefer to deal in the reality and do the best we can with it.