Enviromentalism Over-Rage

There are people, with the best of intentions, that do incredible harm.  This video sums up the idea.  Probably everything that will be posted on this site by me will have to do with people not taking a moment to think about their cause, information they were given, etc.

I remember Ted Danson came out in the early 90’s and said if we didn’t do something dramatic that the oceans would be destroyed in 10 years.  Now obviously that didn’t come to pass.  Does he lose credibility, yes.  Do causes that talk of tragedy get hurt as well sure.

The biggest couterpoint to the idea of global warming is the Time issue with a cover story on the coming Ice Age.  ( In the past it was easy to find the image of that cover.  I could not find it today.)

So now we are finding that the changes we make are not always better than what we were doing before.  Change is good but zealots are not.  In the 80’s, paper bags were the saving grace.  Oops, San Francisco and other cities are banning them.

We want things to be simple but they are not.  Building better homes to conserve heat ended up with homes that don’t get fresh air because it is sealed up too tight.  Longer lasting paint ended up with Lead and for some reason kids ate it.  Economical light cars had weak frames and higher death rates in accidents.

So when I read an article by Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver, I was excited to hear this from someone who I found to be reasonable in interviews.  He is no longer with Greenpeace as he has felt it went from it original vision into a political body with other motivations.

I had often wondered how cutting trees down was actually harmful as long as something was planted behind it. In most timber areas, they plant more than they take.  This is more for their future needs than altruism , but still it happens.  As I have always understood, anything growing consumes more than something not growing.  Fat middle-aged people versus skinny eat-anything teenagers.

Well that is what he said,”Berman, a veteran of the forestry protest movement, should by now have learned that young forests outperform old growth in carbon sequestration.

Although old trees contain huge amounts of carbon, their rate of sequestration has slowed to a near halt. A young tree, although it contains little fixed carbon, pulls CO2 from the atmosphere at a much faster rate.”

“To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood. That means we can then use less concrete, steel and plastic — heavy carbon emitters through their production. Trees are the only abundant, biodegradable and renewable global resource”

And here is a quote to blow some people’s minds, “North Americans are the world’s largest per-capita wood consumers and yet our forests cover approximately the same area of land as they did 100 years ago. According to the United Nations, our forests have expanded nearly 100 million acres over the past decade.”

Too many people want to jump on something before they know enogh.  We will learn more as we go on. And truthfully, we can only make a decision based on what we know but it is our duty to find the best information before we make the decision, and then also be willing to adapt to new reasonable information.

And to Al Gore who said that the debate is over, he lied. And that simple lie cracks his credibility and causes people to double check if everyone agrees, and they don’t.

From an article on people exaggerating to get attention to a cause, “Many of the researchers behind the dire predictions concede that the scenarios are speculative. But they say their projections play a useful role in consciousness raising. ”What it does is serve notice on us; we need to be aware we’re tinkering with fundamentals, and there could be a range of consequences for human health,” says Anthony McMichael of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine”

Think and do a little research before you wave a sign or call for someone to be compared to Holocaust Deniers for not believing your cause.