Global Warming and Healthcare
What does global warming and healthcare have in common? It would seem not much on the surface. Yet, when it is examined more closely there are many connections. Let’s examine one of the most important to me, which is the political outlook of both the global warming enthusiast and the person that wants universal healthcare. Now, to set the stage further, I am not talking about your average guy on the street that thinks we need universal healthcare and also believes we should take care of the environment. No, I am talking about the Al Gore types that are extreme alarmist (Healthcare and Global Warming) who assume mankind is bad, heartless, and uncaring toward our planet and fellow man. Oh yea, let’s not forget they tend to be political types that believe they know better than the rest of us, which is the ultimate connection between them and global warming/healthcare.
I am a conservative, not Republican or Democrat. But, something funny happens in the debate on healthcare and global warming, extremist on both topics seem to be Democrat party supporters and liberal, not Republican. These extremist are convinced that Global Warming must be caused by people. Why, well because it can’t be a natural cycle of the earth they reason, it must instead be caused by people. Reagan optimism in people is not something they posses. They also believe that we as American’s are heartless because we don’t’ provide healthcare to all of our citizens. The problem I have is that liberals, and some democrats, have high jacked these two topics for political gain. As I said above, these people simply believe they know better than the rest of us. Unfortunately, they gain political power from both of these topics, Global Warming and Universal Healthcare, and thus have a stage to influence us all.
For example, Al Gore has been an advocate of Global warming caused by man. Yet, his personal life has contributed more to carbon emissions than most of us will ever contribute. He also says the debate is over, attempting to make everyone who disagrees seem unknowing and ignorant. Yet, good ole Al is the ignorant one on top of being a hypocrite. In his movie An Inconvenient Truth, he fails to tell everyone that Carbon emissions over history only go up AFTER the temperature has risen (usually by several hundred years). For me, that simply blows every explanation this crowd has of global warming. Instead, it is a natural cycle of the earth. Is it getting warmer, sure, it seems that is true. But, it is not caused by human activity, in my opinion. Most of the warming in the twentieth century occurred in the early part, prior to the 1940s. Check out the 10 biggest myths of global warming.
What about a healthcare example? Well, look no further than Michael Moore. In Sicko he tries to tell us how wonderful the Cuban healthcare system is for their people. Do you want to go to Cuba for healthcare? I kind of doubt it. Yet, Mr. Moore has political clout and would rather trust his fellow American’s healthcare, in my opinion, to the government instead of to people’s choices. Again, healthcare high jacked as a topic to advance his liberal extreme political beliefs. So, let’s debate both topics in our society, Universal Healthcare and Global Warming. However, let’s not let the extremist highjack these topics for political gain. Americans as a whole are very smart when they have the facts, not when the media presents biased one sided arguments to the public such as Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. At least in Great Briton a high judge had the sense to point out the inaccuracies in the documentary. I wish we had public officials with the same guts in America. If you have kids, ask them if they saw An Inconvenient Truth in school, mine had no choice but to watch it.
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
This posting could not be more appropriate or timely. Over the holidays I completed a historical book that touched on some of the topics of Global Warming in a historical context. In particular, the work dealt with early maps used to “discover” the North American Continent. Early maps that influenced Magellon’s first recorded global sailing of the Earth. One map in particular, the Pere Re’is Map (Circa 1104) show Greenland as a habitable climate with trees and grass land around settlement areas still there today, while other Islands north of Scotland were shown as covered in glaciers. The global warming enthusiast neglects to take history into account when making their arguments. Historical documents like the Pere Re’is Map indicate that the Earth has gone through (and most likely will go through) many extreme changes over time. Man, despite their arguments otherwise, is not the culprit here. Man is to be admired for our enduring and inventive nature in surviving these events.
Your comments are timely and appropriate as the concepts of “Stewardship” (of the Earth’s resources) and “Entitlement” (to Healthcare or otherwise) are high-jacked by the left. History proves them to be intellectually dishonest at best, and fraudulent in their arguments at worst.
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Generally my standpoint on global warming is that no one can be sure what the cause is. It could just as easily be a man made problem as a natural phenomenon. The length of study needed to really make an accurate conclusion isn’t possible. We do know factually that temperatures are rising. Man made green house gases are probably part of the culprit as well as naturally occurring events. Which one is more to blame is still unclear. Even if the main contributor turned out to not be man what harm would come from reducing carbon emissions?
I like to think that trying to reduce green house gases that are caused by man would help propel technological advances and move man further into the future than simply standing by and continuing to doing things as they have always been done. I’m always a fan of events that can be used as a catalyst for technological achievement because those types of events move society forward.
Reducing our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels forces us to come up with better more efficient ways of doing things. When we are all driving hydrogen powered cars at least you won’t be choking on someone else’s car exhaust. If that helps to reduce green house gases too then all the better. Not developing these types of technologies causes us to become complacent. For me, if the global warming issue is what moves us forward technologically, I’m fine with that regardless of which political party proposes the solutions.
Documentaries on the other hand, are something I’m usually not a fan of. Many times people take what they hear and see in a documentary as factual content when in reality it is all the view of the director and is filmed to support his or her own personal agenda. I’m especially not fond of Michael Moore films. Bowling for Columbine comes to mind as a good example of where he stretches the situations filmed to support his own agendas. Situations exist like this in many documentaries and I’m sure are prevalent in “An Inconvenient Truth” as well. In general I would suggest that documentaries should not be used in school discussions unless they are represented as what they are and not presented as fact.
Global warming stands to be one of those political topics, like abortion, that every candidate has to take a stand on and could possible influence the public’s voting decision, but is something that in reality the candidate can or will do little about. But for me the benefits of forcing us all to think outside the box and come up with new approaches to old technologies is well worth the global warming argument taking place.
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
The problem with the whole global warming debate is that neither side has enough proof to definitively prove one way or the other what is happening. There is neither enough data nor enough computational power to produce a model that is accurate enough to favor either side of this debate. The minute that someone can produce a model that emulates the universe is the day that everything is solved. Until that God CPU gets invented, I’m willing to err on the side of caution.
There is a major problem when media and politics get involved in scientific arenas. Broad assumptions are made on incomplete data that are used to push personal agendas. Global warming is just a buzzword that people are throwing around without any understanding.
I’m still unsure why this is a debatable subject. The world is warming up; is it man made or natural? If it’s natural, then we are just along for the ride. If it’s man-made then we should take action to correct the problem. Like Brandon said above, it will only encourage innovation. At the very worst, we figure out a way to do less harm to our environment, we are able to conserve non-renewable resources, and we eliminate our dependency on foreign oil. Who wouldn’t want those things? Even if global warming turns out to be natural, then at least we’ve improved our quality of life.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Great post.
It does seem the epidemic of the far left to inflate themselves so much that they forget the issue. Al Gore’s repeated and deliberate ignorance of science and Michael Moore’s twisting facts are certainly an interesting parallel.
What seems central to the strategy is these character’s demonization of their audience. Convince Americans that they provide the worst health care for each other, or convince them that they are destroying the planet, and they will be motivated to change. Or perhaps what Moore and Gore are more interested in, they will be motivated to give up their change (with a few larger bills, perhaps) to someone bigger and smarter who can figure out ordinary peoples’ lives for them.
No thanks, I’ll stick with freedom.