Terry Box: No Surrender!
Terry's one of the good guys: a plain-speaking auto reviewer/ranter for the Dallas Morning News [full version via The Washington Post] who never loses sight of the common man. Well, at least not until he's behind the wheel of a death car muscle car. And then he's gone baby gone! Despite the fact that the V8-lovin' Lone Star scribe's feeling the heat over global warming, it's one of those cold, dead hands deals. "I know that my days as an unrepentant gearhead may be numbered. Sky-high gas prices, global warming, urban sprawl, maybe even the "oil war" in Iraq, are all being piled on cars. Yet despite the growing drumbeat against them, the allegations that they're melting glaciers and maiming thousands, the claim that we're choking on them, the fear that they're our worst national addiction, I love them dearly." What follows is a poetic paean to profligate petrol consumption. Box ultimately argues against those who argue against gas-guzzling-for-fun thus: I'm a climate killer, you're a hypocrite; I'll stop when you stop. As if.
More by Robert Farago
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The following link offers an indepth scientific discussion of the issue. I invite folks to share their views with some pretty high-powered specialists. http://www.realclimate.org/
Let's give credit where credit is due. Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, but he did invent global warming. :-)
All I know about Global Warming is back in college, we had a nice forum about it. The head of the Political Science department (and my advisor as I was a poli sci major) argued that global warming was a huge problem and we must do something to stop it. The head of the science department argued that there was no conclusive proof, the earth has gone through this sort of change before industry existed, and that it needed to stop being politicized. I was going to change my major after that...
I don't see what the problem is about Global Warming. We adjust to more efficient devices that consume less energy and last longer. If we are wrong and global warming never comes then we are still better off than today. If the global warming crew is right then maybe we can change our society in time to save ourselves. That said I'm not a supporter of the theory. I AM a supporter of being more efficient and solving the tangible problems first like feeding the hungry around the world. No reason a child needs to be born into squallor and die before they are ten. Let's quit supporting multi-millionare athletes/movie stars/politicians and work on bringing safety and prosperity (relative term - food on the table and a roof over their heads) to the world's poorest. I think naysayers want things to just continue the way they are now - use as much as can be pumped. I worry that the origin of those attitudes lie with those who will profit from things staying the way it has been for the past 100 years. "We won't quit pumping oil no matter what because I'm getting rich from it..."