Blood Sucking Moths, Early Fireflies, and Can We Please Stop Arguing About Who Made The Mess and Just Clean It Up?!
Posted by telecommatt on June 7, 2007
I try to stay away from highlighting obviously biased articles, even if
I agree with the author. It’s the same is-global-warming-real argument
we’ve seen over and over. What upsets me is not the fact that I am
firmly in the this-is-all-our-fault campaign, but the fact that it
really doesn’t matter who’s at fault over global warming. It doesn’t
matter if the models are flawed. It doesn’t matter if the seas will or
won’t rise in 100 years. What matters is that we’ve made a mess of
things and we have an opportunity to clean it up.
We have fireflies all over the place right now. I’ve never seen fireflies out this early here. In fact, when I was young, we had to go over to the next state if we really wanted to see fireflies. Even our local weather guru, Paul Douglas, made mention of the early fireflies the other day. I’m told that this is because plants and animals that couldn’t live this far north a decade ago are now established here.
Check out this article on Treehugger about a moth in Finland that sucks people’s blood. The thing is, it’s not a Finnish moth. It’s moved north due to the warmer weather. (Yeah, we have enough trouble with our own blood sucking state bird, the mosquito. Blood sucking moths? No, thanks!) There is no denying that things are changing. And there is no denying that we are doing things that are bad for the planet. Forget climate models and look around. Is there anything wrong with trying to get back into sync with our planet? And you know what? This is the only planet I’ve got. As far as I’m concerned you can throw your computer models and peer reviewed papers into the recycling bin; I want some help making amends for all the wrong we’ve done so far. If we start with making up for the past, I believe that the future will somehow work itself out with us still in the picture.
Alexander Cockburn (writing in the Nation) has become the latest contrarian-de-jour, sallying forth with some rather novel arithmetic to show that human-caused global warming is nothing to be concerned about.
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