Goodbye To You (Glaciers, Rain Forests, Lots of Cute Animals)

Have you noticed as I have, the spate of recent articles with the phrase "vanished" in the title, along with "disappearing", "dying", and "perishing" (simply I suppose because writers are just getting tired of the word "vanishing")? Here's a small sample:

"Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril"
"Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace"
"Saving the World's Vanishing Shark Species"
"Brokaw Explores the Vanishing Chilean Sea Bass"
"On Emptying Seas, A Vanishing Way of Life"
"Vanishing in the Wild, Mountain Gorillas"
"Louisiana's Vanishing Wetlands"
"Coral Reefs Vanishing Faster Than Rain Forests" (they're winning!)
"Vanishing of Frogs, Toads Tied to Global Warming"
and of course,
"The Vanishing Middle Class" (whose relation to Global Warming is the fact that those who control and blindly support big industry are out-sourcing and down-sizing at such a rate that your kids will be the only thing not vanishing, because they'll be living with you, never having found a job.)

More recently I've read about:

"Northeastern Bats Are Perishing and No One Knows Why"
and an update on the frog situation:
"Link to Global Warming in Frogs' Disappearance is Challenged"

The frog article makes the case that perhaps global warming plays a part but in fact it's a fungus that's killing off the frogs. Yes, Virginia, in many cases of these "vanishings" it is true, a mysterious fungus, or a mysterious cancer or a mysterious virus is what is killing off these species. But that's like saying it's not global warming that is flooding the low-lying parts of the world, it's water! Or it's not global warming that's shrinking glaciers, but excessive heat! It's part of the game that has even purportedly "intelligent" people dodging the issue entirely. "Having lost the argument about whether in fact life forms are disappearing, let's debate about what's making them disappear and make absolutely sure that we don't get blamed for this!" (they cry). "Whatever it is, it's not us!" (they cry) "...and who gives a hoot really whatever it is, as long as we don't have to change our lifestyles or admit we were wrong!!"

I know a few people who have, on principle (the same principle that guides those who believe it is impossible for man to have walked on the moon as well as the principle of "someone else will pick it up"), refused to see the Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". These people believe it to be full of political propaganda and hysteria, and perhaps also, the truth, which, once commonly accepted, won't help any of those who still want to buy a Hummer. And insisting that they will never view the film, they have missed out on the indescribable fascination of watching as, systematically, almost all the catastrophes that Gore predicted 5 years ago when he first started to give his presentation, have come to pass. (If only he could predict the moves of the stock market as accurately!)

I don't know a better argument against the idiocy of denying that global warming is going to cause us some big hurt (and by us, I mean the world, and even rich people who are in another part of the world but whom we still bump into at Starbucks), than the fact that scientists on the side of the deniers never even heard of Global Warming until Gore and the world's environmentalists started yelling about it, and when their predictions started coming true, well, the naysayers (generally the political right) had to get some guys from the same think tank they hired to keep the tobacco companies in the black ("smoking is GOOD for you!") to start saying that Global Warming is natural, periodic, inevitable and has nothing to do with Greenhouse gases, and man-made pollution.

But if that's the case, and now, even these GW deniers say that GW is going to cause problems in the future, then why didn't these scientist (or "scientists") start warning us about it long before Gore? You've noticed that now even Bush is conceding to the fact of GW. What he won't admit is that it's man-made. But why, if it's a natural occurence, did not one scientist on the conservative side ever warn us about rising seas, and more severe hurricanes, and decimating heat waves? Wouldn't that have been helpful? Why didn't they notice or predict, as Gore et al has and did, that there would be disastrous economic consequences of GW, along with preventable loss of life (remember the 2003 heat wave that killed 14000 in France alone?), and suggest that perhaps we ought to worry about neighborhoods in low lying areas, along with our record albums stored in the basement? Doesn't that seem odd? Why were environmentalists who believe GW is man-made able to predict and warn about the problems that we face today, 40 years ago, but those scientists who are trying to sell us on the "natural cycle theory" totally silent, and caught off guard?

I'll tell you why - it's because these anti-GW "experts" are pushing a theory purely to protect conservatives' investments in big industry. You don't hear them reminding us that they predicted melting glaciers and poles and killing heat wave, and that these phenomena were all completely expected in the grand scheme of things. Because those who deny global warming now, never saw it coming.

It was the environmentalists who noticed that glaciers were receding, heat waves were becoming more frequent and increasingly lethal, droughts, devastating fires and floods were increasing in severity, and suggesting that even if you lived on the prairie you might still consider investing in a row boat to tool around main street. The average environmentalist has been predicting issues related to GW for about 40 years. And in the last few years, the only brakes on this environmental juggernaut have been applied by those crazy tree-huggers and their insistence on truth. Those nuts!

So what can you do with naive ignoramuses who continue to ignore and downplay this issue ? Same thing you have always done - argue as much as you can stand, and then when they start getting all emotional and start attacking your virtue, your patriotism and your hairstyle, walk away. Unfortunately sometimes you're sitting across a dinner table from them and although you may have the impulse to pass the mashed potatoes - to their heads! - you must not, because that's rude and not worth the loss of perhaps a very good side dish.

And you know what eventually happens? As much as these deniers argue and huff and puff and make fun, they quietly come around. They come over to our side of the argument so serrupticiously that we who have been warning and doomsaying never get to gloat (darn!). But that's OK, because even better than gloating is to have people convinced that this is a real issue and has to be addressed. And people who were once in denial, once they "get it" become really passionate! People who convert (to anything) are typically even more devout than those who were raised with a certain set of beliefs. You know how people who quit smoking are absolute vigilantes when it comes to smokers? And become much more hardline than people who never smoked? Well that's how converts to environmentalism are. Guilt is good!

So I welcome naysayers. I have to. I know they will eventually see the light (one more violent hurricane or drought or devastating flood in the red states ought to do it). Now we just have to work on the ones who don't believe in evolution. Forget about the ones who don't believe we walked on the moon. Let them hold onto something!