Where's all the "common sense" that politicians based slogans around?
Scientists are alarmed by recent events in Antartica. That being an accelerated rate of melting and a giant crack that happened recently. Scientists are alarmed at the rate that reptiles are dying in the eastern half of North America(perhaps other causes, but alarming nonetheless). Within the last decade practically all records related to weather disasters have been broken. Do you really need to start seeing people being vapourized(exaggeration yes)before you are alarmed?
Let's face some facts: First, yes nature does emit gases that are the same being blamed for the Greenhouse effect. However, they always emitted these gases and for the most part, emitted them in a constant rate. Other parts of the ecosystems negated the effect, as the ecosystems take care of many natural potentialy harmful things.
Secondly, though it was in another thread, I heard someone state that man has "only" altered the Earth's atmosphere with an increase of Greenhouse gas content by 5% or so. At first glance, this looks harmless. However, if we altered the Oxygen levels in the atmosphere that much, life would be dramatically affected. To the point where human existance would be largely decreased, if not made extinct.
Thirdly, we are taxing the natural ability of our planet's systems. If you live in, or near, a large city, look at the air on a hot day. That haze is not natural! Now consider that that haze is duplicated in 10s of thousands of cities around the Earth. BTW, that haze increases the amount of people having heart attacks, so if you can't act on the affect of human pollution on the ecosystems, perhaps you can act on the threat to your health.
How human activities affect the environment, examples from history
Sorry, no links.
1) At least one ancient Mediterranean(sp) city which became rich through trade, eventually was abandoned. The reason was simple enough, the port the city depended upon filled with sand, soil, silt. The cause: Deforestation of the surrounding area.
2) London. I could sight sewage running through the streets and the health problems that followed, but the popularity of the toilet provides a better example. Once Londoners began flushing their sewage into the Thames, their health improved dramatically. On the flipside, everything in the river died! It was even said that people who fell into the river died!
3) Smog! The first time smog was an issue, was again in London. I believe it was the 1950s when Londoners were introduced to what was a frightening phenomena. Today, it is so common that people in large cities consider it a fact of life, or erroneously blame the Heat which accompanies Smog. It is not the heat that is killing most people during a heat wave, it's the air pollution combined with the heat!
4) There are thousands of places in North America where human produced pollution has rendered life obsolete. Most are small areas, but they exist, nonetheless.
Keep putting you head in the sand if you like, the rest of us will continue to try and save your sorry ass!