@Flyingsaucesir Hahahaha. When I was a kid, the worry was about food shortages.

That didn’t scare people enough, so they moved to global cooling because cars, NASA, Aquanet hair spray, and cow farts were going to deplete the ozone layer and we were all going to freeze to death.

That didn’t freak people out enough yet so they switched to global warming and promised that the polar caps would be completely melted away by 2000, then 2002, then 2005, the 2010, then 2012, then 2015, then 2018, then 2020. Now, depending on who’s on TV, it’s next year, 2024, 2030, AND 2032.

But if we would just give them more control of our personal lives and one hell of a lot more of our tax dollars…. They will save us from that extra 1.8 degrees that going to kill us all in 500 year.

Please…..

@CourtJester
My friend, you apparently know nothing of Earth science. In fact, climate scientists NEVER said the polar caps would be melted by 2000 or even 2100. They did predict, about 20 years ago, however, that the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100. That prediction has turned out to be inaccurate only in that it placed the time of an ice-free summer too far in the future. The way things are going, the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in summer before 2050. We see a similar acceleration of ice melt on both the Greenland ice cap and the sea ice around Antarctica. At the height of last summer, the melt water that was pouring off Greenland was roughly equal in volume to 20,000 elefants running into the sea EVERY SECOND. In the history of our species, nothing like it has ever before been seen. This is not the world our ancestors evolved in. The extreme and rapid changes we are seeing with ice are only one aspect of a much wider spectrum of problems. Scientists predicted decades ago that global warming would lead to the expansion of diseases like West Nile virus, Zika virus, and malaria. And so it came to pass. They predicted that storms would become more powerful and more frequent, and so it has come to pass. Houston, Texas got hit by three 500-year storms in three years. The very concept of a 500-year event now needs to be revised. In fact, because things are changing so fast, and because the pace of change s accelerating, we cannot even use the term "new normal." The Beaufort scale for measuring hurricane strength needs a new category now. For the biggest storms, "category five" is no longer sufficient. And the sheer number of storms is also increasing. Last year saw the most named Atlantic storms ever recorded, requiring not just the entire English alphabet but also the Greek. This year, having already gotten to the letter E in early July, we are on track to beat last year's record. Pacific typhoons have also been bigger and deadlier than ever. And where the eastern US has has unprecedented heat and floods, water is in short supply in the western states. They are drying up in a bone-cracking drought with no end in sight. Last year, the record for acres burned in forest fires was shattered by a factor of five; the previous record had only been set the year before that. The Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington, and Canadian British Columbia just went through an unprecedented heat wave that killed thousands of people. Scientists say that whereas up to now this was the kind of event that you might only expect to see once in 500 years, we may well see it happen every decade or two from now on. Now I ask you: do you need to see that actually happen before you will act to mitigate the problem? Mind you, the longer we wait, the worse the problem gets. What will it take for you to wake up and smell the fossil fuels burning down our houses?

@Flyingsaucesir

Giving up your freedoms and paying more taxes won’t change it even a little bit. Studies have shown that the US is the cleanest nation on earth. Why should we give up more so that others such as India, China, North and South Korea do nothing???

It’s simply a money and power grab.

VVVVVVVV

[ossfoundation.us]

@CourtJester
For most of the 20th century the USA was the world's greatest emitter of greenhouse gases. China recently edged ahead of us in that ignominious distinction. Now we are in second place. So to say that we are "the cleanest nation on earth" [sic] is grossly inaccurate. Your assertion that China, India, and South Korea are "doing nothing" to combat global warming is also patently false. China has more stringent emissions standards for its automobiles than most states in the USA, and China is making far greater investments in mass transit, including high speed rail. And Americans consumers share a lot of responsibility for greenhouse gases produced in China's manufacturing sector. We cannot simply move our production offshore and then act all innocent when our dollars are driving that pollution. South Korea is a relatively small country and most of its population us concentrated in big cities where they have state-of-the-art mass transit. This contrasts sharply with the USA, with our suburban sprawl effectively necessitating that everyone have a car and drive it everywhere. India is a developing country, and only a fraction if its citizens own cars. You can bet that as global warming bites ever harder, there will be increased effort to combat climate change. It's true that a certain amount of increased warming is already baked into the system. But to just go on with business as usual and ensure a full-blown catastrophe when it could be avoided would be an epic moral failure. Tell me, are there no young people you care about?