Originally Posted by mattisawesome

waflyboy,
Couple of things....global climate change has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. And I will preface by saying this...if man is responsible for changing the climate as much as Al Gore predicts then we absolutely should do something about it. I'm pretty open minded on this subject, but I think there are other reasons for us to get off of oil besides global warming: National security, our own economic health and our ability to continue to be a major economic power.

Let me briefly go into another point with out making this extremely political:

1. In reality I do not see enough evidence for making the case that man is reaking such havoc on the environment and the globe that we will destroy ourselves in the way many people think. I also think there is enough evidence to the contrary to say that we are not having much of an effect at all. There are ice core samples from the middle ages saying it was warmer then than it is now...how do you account for that? That implies that the earth cools and warms without our help.

2. I naturally tend to be skeptical about doomsday claims. The very fact that media, scientists and other influential environmentalists are now calling it "Global Climate Change" instead of global warming should throw up some red flags. I've read that weather balloon data has indicated only slightly warmer surface temperatures but that if global warming were as bad as climate models predict that the upper atmostphere would be warming as well. However, there is no indication that this warming is going on anywhere above the surface. Also it takes hundreds of years for oceans to cool and warm and the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide on Earth is oceans. When oceans warm they give off carbon dioxide and one thing that Al Gore doesn't show you is that carbon dioxide levels follow temperature and not the other way around. On many graphs there is as much as a 400 year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide levels.

3. My main point here is that we just don't know about climate change and many climatologists say that we don't have enough information to start making drastic economic decisions. There are also scientists saying that some of the antarctic ice melting could be due to underwater volcanoes. I've also heard that we've been on a cooling trend since 98 and that we need to get read for a global cooling. Scientists said 30 years ago(all though I realize they didn't have quite the technology we do now) that we were entering the next ice age.

4. I do think that we certainly have a responsibility to preserve the environment and asking me such a question is a bit silly. You don't know how tight regulations are in the oil and gas industry on surface pipe, and conductor pipe and what happens if you make a stupid mistake and you let oil or gas leak into the water table. This used to be a big problem but I can guarantee you that these things are not as bad as they once were. You and I, however, agree that we should do what we can as quickly as we can to get as much off of oil as we can. Unfortunately right now and for a very long time it will be part of how we power our world. I know this is redundant but I'm mainly saying that there is not enough data to support the drastic changes that would supposedly be required to "curb" global warming.