Cassius

But I care.

Question, CriminalKillaz: Would you walk up to a stranger on the subway and tell them all your deepest secrets? The details of your relationships? I can guarantee you they won't care, so will that make it OK for you to do it? No? Why should someone know just because they have a badge and gun? Why does the state get to decide whether I have anything to hide? Why is wanting something to stay private somehow only something that takes place if it's illegal? You've said you're fine telling random strangers everything about yourself that doesn't implicate you in crimes; care to share some of that with us?

Something that always has bothered me whenever climate change is 'debated' is that the denying side always tends to claim two things:
1. 'Global Warming' is a bad name for Global Climate Change (therefor the theory is bunk) and
2. We don't have enough data.
I think both sides can agree on the first part of number 1, since it's a bad name that is much too overused. Yes, the earth is getting hotter, but as an average, not as a day-to-day thing. As a result, it'll be colder some places and warmer others on any given day, but if you look at what the average temperature is every year, it is always going up. Seriously, check it out. By calling it Global Warming, it makes people in Minnesota think it is bullshit every time it snows. XKCD has a decent comic explaining the negative impact of calling climate change global warming.
 
Number two on the other hand? Bullshit, plain and simple. There are no legitimate scientific bodies that believe the current heating of the planet is primarily caused by anything other than human beings. None. The last one changed its opinion in 2007, and it was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Seriously. It's one of the most wildly agreed upon things in the scientific world, up there with vaccines being safe and physics being real. I know we, or at least I, really don't want us to be causing climate change, because if we aren't, it means we don't need to change anything. We can keep pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year and never get worried. But the sad fact is we are most definitely doing it, and no one who knows what they are talking about disagrees. Of course, obviously some people do. Who? Primarily the fossil fuels lobby and the Koch brothers, or people who have a lot of interest in keeping people using coal, natural gas and oil, instead of renewables. Just like when scientific consensus was reached that smoking and chewing tobacco was detrimental to the health of a human being, a bunch of deniers appeared on behalf of the Tobacco industry shedding 'doubt' on the studies. Between 2002 and 2010, conservative billionaires secretly donated nearly $120 million (£77 million) to more than 100 organizations seeking to cast doubt on the science behind climate change. If climate change was so obviously bunk, or so plainly easy to see as unresearched and not our problem, then why would businesses and politicians be spending millions of dollars to suppress information and raise doubt about scientific consensus? 

We are causing climate change. It isn't going to end life on earth, but it could very well end our life. Humans are an immensely species. We've built machines that have taken us off of our own planet, and right now you are reading something that was shot at a satellite with a beam of light less than 3 seconds before you could read it. Unfortunately, we have become powerful enough to, in small steps and over hundreds of years, impact the balance of a very delicate system of things. No one reading this is likely to be severely impacted by climate change. But our children will be. And theirs. We have to work today to mitigate the future consequences of our actions, and anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed about the facts or willingly ignoring them for personal gain. 

Wow thanks for the support