Save the Planet

Okay, I'll admit that I am not a scientist. But since when is being an expert in a field a prerequisite to expressing an opinion?

Acknowledgments out of the way, I am going to go out on a limb and express my opinion that the global warming issue is an emotional exercise completely devoid of skepticism. There are people (adults, mind you) who actually live by the motto, "Save the planet." I can understand children and idealistic teenagers actually believing that saving the planet is a worthy and highly attainable goal. But when it's adults, politicians, and Al Gore, it strikes me as just a bit dreamy and dangerously simplistic.

Human beings are just as much a part of nature as hurricanes and the wild kingdom. As such, humans have a logical and mechanical ability to create things out of our surroundings, things that make our lives abundantly easier and allow for happier and healthier living. Sanitation systems, for example, have been responsible for dramatically raising our life expectancy.

We create things to meet our needs and to change our status quo. The ability to build buildings, air conditioners, motorcycles, and latex paint is in our nature -- it's natural to our biological makeup. Human beings have the capability to solve complex problems because human beings possess a highly developed brain.

Some people give great deference and respect to the fact that the planet houses a multitude of species and weather systems. A respect that I believe is warranted. But some assume that the Earth would be as it always was, but for the acts of man. As if the acts of man can be separated from the nature and acts of every other living thing. To some, man is an aberration in the balance of the ecosystem, and, if only the accident of man never occurred, the ecosystem would flourish, undisturbed, forever and ever.

I imagine some people would argue that since man possesses free will he should realize his acts are having a negative effect on our planet. The argument would continue, that, consequently, man should exercise his free will by choosing to implement planet-friendly alternatives. "The glaciers are melting, so we'd better think of something soon, collectively, as good citizens of the global community, to re-ice them," someone would probably say. And, of course, there's an inconvenient truth to all of this, we are told.

Forgive me for asking, but doesn't the Earth go through an ice age every couple-hundred-thousand years or so? What happens in between ice ages? Better yet, how does the Earth come out of an ice age, if not for global warming? Let's see, man has been around for maybe 14,000 years. The Earth is about one billion years old, give or take a million. So that adds up to ... a lot of years that the Earth has existed without man, Earth's menace.

Will someone please introduce a little skepticism into this ridiculous debate, before it's too late, and people's lives and property are sacrificed on the alter of save-the-planetism.