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Confessions of a Global-warming Skeptic The
New Hampshire Recently after an on-campus political event I was chatting with a The debate is not over, at least for me. Please allow me more time to decide, without branding me a heretic or a denier. The arguments on both sides are so convincing that whenever I listen to one side alone I find myself agreeing with that side. Since currently the "alarmed" side of the debate seems to be leading, let me support the underdog for the moment and bias my reasons for indecision toward the "not alarmed" side. These are merely my personal, unscientific intuitions, but see if you find yourself nodding in agreement with any of them. To me the global warming debate merits caution because... 1. The debate feels more fanatical than other debates, say, about health care or the war in Iraq. I sense some unconscious emotional forces at work, including an in-group mentality. Being on the wrong side of this debate can affect your social relationships, as it did in the incident above.
2. There are likely hidden agendas. What was once a scientific debate has migrated into the political realm, where stakes are high in research funding, corporate profits, political careers, and possibly even geopolitical strategy. (Do powerful nations unfairly handicap underdeveloped nations by holding them to higher environmental standards than they themselves upheld?) Disinformation could be lurking anywhere. 3. There is a Luddite contingent that unconsciously *enjoys* carbon dioxide being considered a deadly substance because that slows industrialization. The calls to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which warm the earth, far outnumber the calls to *increase* aerosol emissions, which cool the earth. Why?
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