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It is clear from well documented evidence that we have been a period of "global warming" for the last 10,000 years. Prior to that, it was too cold for habitate most of the higher latitudes and the average planet temperature made extreme swings over short periods of time. At about 10,000 years ago the average planet temperature increased to about where it is today and importantly it has been relatively stable. This marked the end of the ice ages of the previous 90,000 years. This enabled all of man's recorded history and modern developement along with explosion in our population due to increase in our habitat and the ability to feed ourselves.
The only notable exception to the modern stable temperatures is the Younger Dryas period about 7000 years ago (little ice age). In this period the world average temperature dropped a whopping 2-1/2 degrees. The result was crop failures, starvation and mass migration. Generally, a very bad time was shared by all.
I don't doubt that modern man effects and exploits the envirinment and is wasteful of resources. We, however, have had very littlle effect on the current state of things. Had we never existed and never burned the first lump of coal the glaciers would still be melting. This is evident if you map the extent of the ice in Glacier Bay over the last 200 years. 200 years ago the ice extended to Juno and it the ice face was both wide and very high. 100 years ago John Muir obseerved the face from a mountain peak 30 miles further north. 100 years later, today, it has receded another 30 miles and we are being told to blame ourselves.
We have pleanty of very good reasons to conserve and do better with what we have. We need to find other ways to make our cars move and to carry on with life without burning carbon fuels. These resources have a much higher value as feed-stocks for the very things that make our modern lives possible (plastics, fibers, medicine etc. list is nearly infinite). What has happened is that the politicians have figured out how to tax it. We are now to a point where policy and technology decisions are being based on a myopic and false view of things. We are now teaching our children this world as fact. This will bind us into generations of people who will not be able to see the truth if they were drounding in it. Please don't tell them the world is flat and the sun revolves around the Earth. That took hundreds of years to fix.
Does anyone remember only a few years ago the scientific community was warning of of Global Cooling and the big freeze comming?
In the midst of this and the Federal spending like drunken pirates did you notice that the Fed ceased all funding to Hydrogen and Fuel cell research? Instead of, say, finding a way to generate hydrogen from solar cells for automobile fuel from your roof-top collectors, we will instead be mining and consuming heavy and toxic metals (imported) for exotic batteries. This will shift electric needs to power plants (coal) to recharge the things. We should be aiming to become the world leaders in hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen generation. We should aim to own this technology. Instead, we are waiting for the Chineese and Japanese to wrap up the technology so we can buy it from them. (with what?) If you want a surge in the US economy you must manufacture here.
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