besty, not a bad run down mate.
I think there is a very little doubt that human activity is causing increase in so called Green House gasses. Research over the last 100 or so years has proven it time and time again. In fact, if something else had been proved so convincingly, something that can be cashed off the hip, most people (businesses) would have embraced the idea long time ago. So it is more to do with what motivates us to take or not take action than any science behind GW.
As far as public opinion is concerned it is mostly due to efforts such people as controversial “Marshall Institute” and alike that stirred the waters of controversy thereby leaving impression in public’s mind that science is questionable, while nothing could be further from the truth. The thing about public opinion is that it is easily maneuvered by fear. And fear everyone immediately feels is that of loss of a job, house etc, i.e. failing economy. At times like these it is very easy to pass very controversial idea into the public consciousness where they tend to reside there for a very long time despite all the signs pointing in another direction. For instance, we are told if we don’t do certain things, our kids will live like “those people in the third world countries, do you really want to do that?”
Well in doing so they appeal on two things, one is fear and another is prejudice about “those people”. And both of these are to do with touching dark side in us that instantly rejects alternative no mater how much better it is. We are blinded by what we see immediately in front of us, a mirage created by “well meaning leaders and people” in our community and fail to see way brighter future that does not depend on old way of doing things.
The thing is, liabilities of our old technologies are becoming so great that kids we are so worried about are actually going to bear the brunt of it in few decades. So we urgently need new ways of doing things, and you know what? We already have them, many developed into great details.
For example, nature can and does teach us how to make our technologies way better, how to improve our housing, insulation, how to reduce consumption of energy and it had been worked out in many instances into a fine art, i.e. the field of Nature Inspired Engineering or biomimicary, which is one of my specialties, so if you want to know more, by all means contact me.
Nature had several billions of years to perfect things whereas we had been perfecting most of ours for less than 100 years (but these are the things that make cash flow at the moment)
We can create way better technologies and in fact we already have them in research labs all over the world, I wonder how come things like that are hardly ever in public consciousness but unreasonable doubts about GW are, now why is that?
Nature teaches us how to make our own designs better, NOT how to return into cave living some of modern leaders so fondly like to refer to. We can make lives of our kids better than any other generation that had ever lived on this planet before, or we can do nothing and let them deal with consequences of our lack of motivation, which sadly has been maneuvered by those businesses who find it way easier to do things old way than to even try giving it a shot to something new. As result we are not even paying the full price for it yet, our kids will.