The Global Warming Debate is Broken

Because of the upcoming talks at Copenhagen, everyone’s been talking about global warming recently.  The news even featured  a member of a Commonwealth government claiming that global warming is not true.  In my own country, Republicans like to say that global warming isn’t true.  The opposition parties in both countries disagree.  Look, this debate is over the wrong question.  There can be no debate about whether global warming is happening.  It either is or it isn’t.  That’s not up for debate.  Are average temperatures higher year over year compared to the past?  Then we have global warming.  The globe is getting warmer.  End of debate.  If not, then we don’t have global warming.  What we really need is debate over whether it’s human caused, human exacerbated, or neither.  After all, the planet has been warmer and cooler than its current temperature.  So we need to figure out if what we’re doing is enough to make a difference.  If it is, we should probably knock it off so we don’t make things worse.  If it is solely our responsibilty, then we need to stop right away.  But if it’s going to get warmer no matter what and our activities only matter in the thousandths of a degree, then there’s no point in doing anything.  So this is where we need to be and this is what we need to figure out.  Stop arguing over whether the planet is getting warmer or not.  It’s like arguing if the sun came up today.

• Global-Warming