“Has the threat of Global Warming been overstated?” I read this all the time – or at least far too often and it’s just such a ridiculous discussion. Thankfully most people don’t take those seriously who say that Global Warming is a ‘hoax’ anyway – the low level of scientific knowledge these ‘deniers’ exhibit both in personal discussion and public interviews is really astounding: they seem to be under the impression that GW is essentially a belief: The temperatures are rising and you can just pick the explanation you like best. Some believe it’s due to some strange gases that are being put into the air and that in some magical fashion make the temperature go up, others blame the stronger sun, still others believe that God is sending rage ray to Earth because less and less homosexuals and unbelievers are being put to death. If you can’t win an argument, see that you can weaken the other side and call it a draw.
Claiming that the problem is overstated is a different issue. Yes, GW is real and humans are causing it but it isn’t really so bad. After all, the Earth is resilient and much bigger than we little humans are. And 2° warming is unrealistic, maybe it will only be 1°. And now stop worrying and get back to your place on the assembly line.
Well, first of all, scientists are constantly correcting their predictions into the opposite directions: Every time they make a prediction, a few months later they admit they understated the problem. Like in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. In fact, I feel like I’ve been reading an article like these every other month for the last 2 years.
Secondly, there’s no reason to pretend that Global Warming is the only environmental problem we’re facing. Even if GW was not only understated but a single big hoax, still 80% of big fish in the oceans would be gone, still 200 species a day would be going extinct, still carcinogens would poison the air, still an island of plastic twice as big as the US would be floating in the Pacific, still pesticides would poison the ground and our food, still the atomic waste would have to be put somewhere, still the planet would be suffocated by concrete and asphalt.
These problems, by the way, will also not be solved by electric cars, biofuels (especially the latter will probably make at least a few of them worse, actually) or any other device some CEO dreams up in order to exploit our need for meaningful change and gain still more profit.
So let’s not look at one tree in this forest of atrocities against the planet and argue about its circumference but think about a way to solve *all* of them.
