Global Warming

So this morning I was listening to NPR, as I usually do while I get ready for work, when a story came on about a 16 year old girl who decided (with the help of her step father) that she didn’t believe that humans were effecting the current heating of the earth. She (with the help of her step father) went out and found “statistics” and “data” that supported her theory about the human equation in global warming, all on the Internet. She then put together her own website to show the world, or anyone who has access to the Internet, that people aren’t affecting the climate. She even received a birthday card from a senator who said she was an inspiration for the cause of getting rid of the alarmist global warming craze.
Now I’m all for skepticism and questioning when the facts aren’t there to support a supposition. And frankly I agree there is some amount of alarmist reaction. True we probably won’t see immediate catastrophic effects of global warming. The change will be somewhat gradual for the most part. Ignoring the rising number of hurricanes of strength in the Atlantic, and higher levels of flooding, melting ice sheets, disappearing glaciers and my personal favorite drowning polar bears, as catastrophic events. (Personally I do but I can see someone in Iowa not really caring about these things) Yes there are naturally occurring climate cycles. Yes they do cause things like the ice age and the warming periods, but the real issue here is that people and our emissions and carbon foot prints, and our use of resources seems to be accelerating these cycles and making them more extreme. The vast majority of credible climate scientists say it’s happening, they have data that support them in their assertions, and they say we need to do something.
Let’s just say we ignore both sides of this issue and look at the base fact of the matter. Is it doing us any good to emit more carbon? Does it help us to use more electricity? Do we really need to throw away every piece of paper, plastic bottle and soda can? Out side of being dependant on foreign oil (and look where that’s gotten us I had to pay $50 to fill my car up this weekend) and looking at oil drilling in some of the most beautiful places in our country (ANWAR) and belching coal fired power plants what good is it? Personally I don’t see the advantage in any of these things. I know my nose and sinuses go crazy in cities where there is a lot of pollution. Where is the harm in developing green technologies? What is bad about using renewable resources like the wind, the sun and water? How much does it hurt me to walk to work instead of drive?
Taking the emotion out of this issue and looking at it logically “green” just makes more sense. Granted the oil and car companies won’t like it, but they’ll get over it. In fact the car companies that have started going in the green direction seem to be enjoying the benefits of hybrid technologies already with higher profits. Someone tell me where the bad is in being green? Maybe we just need to call it something else to make people think its less alarmist. Polymer restructuring? Reorganized consumption? Jesus technologies?
I realize this is probably a little rambling and disjointed. Forgive me I’m out of practice.