Global Warming. Why is it so politicized?

Question

I'm sort of looking for the reason it is so hot button. It is because people don't want to be regulated, or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Mostly because in order to slow global warming, we need governments to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Also because former politician Al Gore has become the public face of global warming.

Answer 2

You're missing two things.

Many people take being conservative to an extreme. If environmentalists say something it must be wrong, no matter how many scientists also say it. They should listen to Newt:

"Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich challenged fellow conservatives to stop resisting scientific evidence of global warming"

There is a conspiracy to deny global warming, well funded by some companies. They follow the Karl Rove model and politicize the issue.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/

It's not really political, it's science and data:

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

Answer 3

We only have these debates in the US, in other nations (more scientifically educated) they don't have political debates on science. Typically the political right takes up the anti-science side.You'll notice that in europe and asia debates on things like global warming and evolution don't exist.

So, the real reason global warming is politicized is because americans are not smart enough for it not to be.

It is sad really, considering US universities lead the world in science and engineering education, americans have become too lazy to get a "hard" degree and the science and engineering schools at our universities are becoming filled with foreign students. Meanwhile, americans continue to believe any type of (non)scientific propaganda that is thrown at them.

Answer 4

It's because you have one group of people (mostly democrats) who see global warming as a problem that needs to be addressed by the government. Then you have another side (mostly republicans) who do not want laws imposed that will have adverse effects on the profitability of business and agriculture. Now, thanks in part to Al Gore taking up the issue, these idealogies have trickled down so that nearly all democrats have sided with the AGW theory and nearly all republicans have sided against, whether any of them understand it or not.

PS: I think the division is quite apparent in the amount of biased answers to this decidedly unbiased question.

Answer 5

Money of course
If the government decides to sanction against global warming industry will have to waste billions of dollars doing things that make no real difference.

And global warming is what enviromentalists currently use as their main fund raising scam.

Answer 6

I think Pink Floyd pretty much summed it up.

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, it's a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it's a hit.
Don't give me that do goody good bull****.
I'm in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet.

Money, it's a crime.
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away.

"HuHuh! I was in the right!"
"Yes, absolutely in the right!"
"I certainly was in the right!"
"You was definitely in the right. That geezer was cruising for a bruising!"
"Yeah!"
"Why does anyone do anything?"
"I don't know, I was really drunk at the time!"
"I was just telling him, he couldn't get into number two.
He was asking why he wasn't coming up on freely, after I was yelling and
screaming and telling him why he wasn't coming up on freely.
It came as a heavy blow, but we sorted the matter out"

Answer 7

because several people want more facts before we act.

the biligerant "experts" then tell everyone the "facts are in" and there is "consensus",
but won't share all the research, just enough to fool you.

or we find out the numbers are wrong- like NASA's data.

if the input data is wrong, which we are slowly learning, the outcome is wrong as well.

but the warm mongers still cling to their "belief" because even if it isn't true, its still good for the environment.

that is the key right there.

Answer 8

Leftists and democrats see this as a great way to gain power through their traditional means: scare the people by claiming some impending doom and make the claim that they are the only ones who can save us. The ultimate goal is to reshape American society into some nebulous utopia of "fairness" and to confiscate/redistribute earned wealth for government use. Your first red flag that global warming is a scam, is the left's rabid insistence that the scientific community has complete consensus on the topic. No such thing as total consensus on a topic as poorly understood as climate. Second red flag is the left's efforts to silence dissent on the issue as evidenced by the ongoing attacks on the credibility of NASA's climitological data and the attacks on the head of climatology at MIT. If you read posts here on Y!A, you will also note a strange phenomena: global warming believers have made themselves experts on our sun's effects on the "climate" of other planets. This is especially telling of the fanaticism that these idiots exibit as there is NO understanding of climate on other worlds by any scientific body, and only limited understanding of weather on other planets based upon scant observations over the last 30 or 40 years or so. Finally, witness for yourself the emotional context global warming believers invoke. For example, they will go on and on about the so called changes they have observed over a period of some years of their lifetime and claim that these observations are proof of global warming. They will say things such as: the level of Lake Superior is at it's lowest level ever. They will use words such as "unprecedented" or "never in history" In this one example it is notable that current predictions call for the Lake to reach it's lowest level since 1926. In other words, it has been this low before. The implication is that we don't fully understand all the factors that drive the lakes level. Virtually every claim of some "record" or some extreme you hear from the left ignores the fact of an earlier occurance. Many times these occurances are from decades past, or even before the industrial revolution,long before GM started selling SUVs. Never overlook the left's propensity for outright lies in furtherence of their agenda. Captain Planet (algore) made a movie, featuring for emotional impact, a polar bear drowning because of a lack of pack ice in the arctic. What he didn't tell you is, the bear was digital, no credible evidence exists of polar bears drowning (they are adapted to swim arctic seas), polar bears have survived as a species thousands of years of advancing and retreating ice cover with no ill effects. The movie should be titled "A Convenient Lie"



Good luck.

Answer 9

It's been hijacked by the communist anti-capitalist movement. It's become nothing more than a group of people trying to tell you how you have to live your life. It's similar to Islam being hijacked by the extremists.

Answer 10

In most countries in the world, it's not. America has a habit of making everything into a divisive partisan argument.