Obviously, I wasn’t clear in what I said.
I was talking about the political objectives for which MMGW is the foundational proposition. I wasn’t talking about abortion or profanation of marriage.
I see, and which political objectives is MMGW the foundational principle of? If it’s true that there are objectives here that use the result of MMGW to legislate and pass morally problematic, or at the very least, troublesome laws, that
still doesn’t mean that the
science behind AGW is bunk. That’s what I am trying to drive home, here. The two need to be divorced, and the
implementation of MMGW to legislate and pass troublesome laws is what needs to be addressed from a political perspective. What I mean to say, don’t fight the science, but fight the
arguments that associate the science with the politics.
As I said before, if American Catholics of a more devout and conservative bent are seen rallying against AGW, it will promote the already present, and erroneous, stereotype of the Catholic Church being this anti-science barbaric organization. That’s not what would need to be rallied against; otherwise, one would sort of be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as they say.
Addressing your practices as you name them, I think “making utility bills skyrocket” as a political objective (promised by Obama) exceeds what you’re talking about.
I am aware parts of Spain are mild year-round. I am also aware parts of it are bitterly cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. I’m vaguely aware that in the central part, one could die without adequate heat in the winter. A much larger portion of the U.S. is deadly cold in the winter.
And is there really a lot of good sense in the U.S. government shutting down the coal industry, which is the world’s cleanest, when Germany burns increasing amounts of lignite to keep its industry running?
“Political MMGW” at least in the U.S. is, as I mentioned before, rather like Sharia. Very few people despise Islam as a religion, but almost no westerner wants to live under Sharia.
Yes, in Spain the situation can be rather extreme – if you look around, it’s not just lack of heating in the central part in winter, but people die of heat stroke/exhaustion in Madrid almost every summer.
I’d be curious to know what laws, though, would resemble Sharia if these legislations were passed. I’m trying to figure out where this line of thought is coming from.
You see this “American denial attitude” because most Americans have lost interest in AGW because it hasn’t happened.
Industrial CO2 output by countries like China, Russia and India are increasing while the U.S. is showing marked reduction. Why are these countries not pressured into reducing their industrial products? After all, this is supposed to be a world-wide problem.
I think these two fairly recent articles may be a useful read
theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/global-warming-pause-trade-winds-pacific-ocean-study
io9.com/global-warming-hiatus-doesnt-mean-that-temperatures-s-1636344544
They also debunk common fallacies. In particular,
this is what I think is most useful to note:
Although the rate of increase in the globally and annually averaged temperature of the atmosphere near the surface has slowed since around 2000 compared to the rate of increase over the preceding three decades, near-surface warming of the atmosphere has continued. The 2000s were warmer than the 1990s, and the 2010s so far have been warmer than the 2000s.
Your actions are all very commendable, far more than me. I could learn a thing or two from you!
I do not mean to castigate American Republicans and suggest that they alone reject MMGW. It is just that I do have a perception that this is a uniquely charged issue in America between the left and right of the political spectrum.
Consider the ‘right’ of our political system in Britain. The Conservative Party leader stated at the beginning of the last year…
theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/26/climate-change-serious-threat-david-cameron-prime-ministers-questions
Can you really blame me, a Brit, for just not getting this seeming American peculiarity? I’m not trying to be judgemental, I just don’t get why MMGW is such a political issue in the US differentiating left from right, whereas in the UK it is a scientific issue that informs public policy on both sides of the political spectrum.
Again I see it as a most bizarre polarization of the public arena that makes politics even more unnecessarily visceral than it needs to be.
The debate in the UK as well as many other countries, is not whether MMGW is a reality but
how it should be addressed. This does split the left from the right, with the Tories favouring climate change being tackled in the cheapest possible way and rejecting demands from our fellow EU member states to cut carbon emissions at a faster rate.
This is what also stands out to me. In Spain, this has
nothing to do with politics; it’s considered a scientific fact that is happening, and it isn’t something that’s
exploited by one party or another. It’s why the political aspect of this that sort of stands out in America seems bizarre to me.
)
) .