Global warming a hoax?

There are many people who have been saying for years that global warming is a hoax, that nothing bad will come of it even if it is partially true that the world is gaining a few degrees, and that the entire "scare" is an invention and a contrivance of the environmentalist movement.

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(NOTE: This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the intersection of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.” The author’s latest book is Happier Than God, published in February by Emnin Books and distributed by Hampton Roads.)
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A number of years ago now I acted as co-host on a nationally syndicated radio talk show on the Talk Radio Network with a man named David Masters. David is a very nice person who I enjoyed working with immensely. He is a man of great integrity whose word is his bond; the kind of person with whom a handshake is sufficient to close a million dollar deal.

Having said that, I have to tell you that David also holds some of the most far-right-of-center political views of any person I have ever met. (Or, at least he did when he was on the air with me. I haven't spoken with him lately...but I somehow doubt that his deepest views have shifted.)

The reason I bring this up now is that David's perspective on some things echoed and mirrored some of the ideas I have heard from the Far Right for many years -- and I think those views are worth exploring here, so that we can hold them up to some small scrutiny.

For instance, David held that the entire "global warming scare," as he would call it, was more a "hoax" than anything else, perpetrated on the American people and the world in order to serve the agenda of the "ecology freaks," as others have called those in the environmentalist movement (such as Al Gore) who would seek to wake people up to the dangers our planetary system is facing today.

David sincerely did not believe that there was any such thing as real global warming -- not to the degree that there was any real danger -- and he held that even if there was a rise in planetary temperature of a few degrees over the next several decades, so what? Nothing really bad was going to happen. He often chided me for my views on the subject, and said that I was like Chicken Little running around proclaiming that the sky was falling.

Well, folks, the sky is falling.

In case you missed it, the Associated Press reported the day before yesterday that a chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed. The AP report added that this event put "an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk," according to global scientists.

I am wondering today whether it is better to be run around saying that the sky is falling, or to be an ostrich with your head in the sand. Perhaps a cry of emergency might be better than a simple looking away. The worst we can do is overreact, which has got to be better than not acting at all, wouldn't you say?

"Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started Feb. 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years," the Associated Press reported.

This is scary, folks. Or, at least, a cause for concern. Scientists had predicted the collapse of the Wilkins Shelf -- but not for 15 years. Its pulling apart on Tuesday means that our computer models may be way, way off -- and that the worst impacts of global warming may be upon us long before anyone could have imagined and would dared to have predicted.

The portion of the ice shelf that broke away Tuesday makes up about 4% of the whole, scientists said (a fact sure to be pointed to by naysayers of global warming as evidence that there is "nothing going on" for us to be upset about), but those same scientists indicate that this 4% is an important part of the shelf and its separation could trigger further and more widespread collapse.

Said the AP report: "Such occurrences are 'more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system,' said Sarah Das, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. 'These are things that are not re-forming,' Das said. 'So once they're gone, they're gone'."

Indeed. And once all that ice has melted, it will, indeed, fill up our global oceans, causing a rise in sea levels worldwide.

One thing I would do now: Discontinue all -- and I mean all -- ocean shore development, and begin slowing dismantling seaside population centers, moving them inland over the next 10 to 20 years.

Sound drastic?

I guarantee you that this will be done. I guarantee it. It is not a question of whether, it is a question of when. We can either do it now, at our leisure, or later, in a hurry -- or later, still...after, for many, it's too late...

I have always felt that spiritual awareness and social consciousness go hand in hand. I also believe that human beings are creating their own reality. That would seem to argue that we can avoid all this by simply choosing to. Yet what I know is that some of the processes of collective creation take decades and even centuries to instigate -- and could take longer than a moment to "undo."

Part of the process of creating our collective future and the future of our children is acting now on behalf of our species. Part of that process might be that we at last take global warming seriously.

What about it, David? Are you ready to give in and admit that the "environmentalists" may have been right?