The Inconvenient Reality

The debate on Global Warming and whether Al Gore will run in 2008 has been re-energized ever since the release of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (trailer). Debate has ranged from whether Global Warming exists to whether this is actually a documentary (some have made the argument that it does not provide a balanced view from both sides and as such should not be considered a documentary).

Global warming has and still is one of the hot button environmental issues of the last 20+ years, but it has been brought more recently into the main stream American media, but not only by this documentary but also from the extremely wicked 2005 hurricane season which saw the destruction of New Orleans.

My interest is not just in global warming, but in the environment as a whole. That said, I don't want to turn this into a long discourse on my environmental views, but to focus on one of the principal arguments revolving around global warming.

There are basically two dominant camps in the global warming debate:

those who think global warming is occurring as a result of human activity,

those who think that global warming is occurring as part of a natural planetary cycle.

Those who don't believe global warming isn't happening have more or less disappeared from the scientific community. Given the evidence on record, it's pretty hard to dispute.

Al Gore belongs to the group who consider the influence humans have had on global warming to be a truth. Most of the scientific community seems to agree that there hasn't been sufficient debate to state that this is necessarily an absolute truth, but it is safe to say that those in the human influence sphere agree that immediate action should be taken.

My thoughts are this:

I agree there has not been sufficient scientific debate to determine with absolute certainty that global warming is being cause by humans; the planet is after all basically the most complicated system we know; just look to the inaccuracy of weather reports for a queue or our inability to
predict with any certainty when an earthquake will occur (a topic foremost on my mind when I read articles like this).

So let's assume for just a few minutes that we do have a good and true scientific debate on this subject; when is it likely to be resolved? 1 year? 5 years? 15 years? And what if it turns out that human activity is blame for the rising global temperature in our environment. How much damage will have been done, and how much of it will be irreversible? Once we reach a conclusion, we'll then need to determine how best to counteract these actions, and with a system as complicated as this how long will that take?

To people who are calling for more debate before action I say this: What is the harm of taking action how? We know that pumping millions of tons of green house gases (most notability CO2) isn't good for human health, it's dirtying our cities and changing plant life and habitats. Why do we need to wait until we know with absolute truth what is the cause of global warming? Asthma, and respiratory problems are on the rise, increasing the burden on an already over taxed health care system, pushing up insurance rates, cutting employer and employee spending money. If it turns out that global warming is due to a natural planetary cycle we'll be all the more thankful, breath a sign of relief with cleaner air, and improved health conditions.

Humanity is not somehow decoupled from the environment, as the species with the greatest influence and impact on our surroundings it is our responsibility as care takers to ensure that the environment will continue to support the speices of the world, if not for there sake, then for ours; they are all an integral part of our survival. If we do not maintain the balance of the system, it will readjust to reach a new equalibrium that may or may not include us.