Here is an interesting site

http://www.co2science.org/

They suggest that the billions of tons of CO2 we (the humans) pump into the atmosphere is really beneficial because it gives plants more CO2 to convert to oxygen and everything is getting better all the time. Global warming is just a natural cycle which happens periodically, nothing to worry about. After all, there have been natural periods of global warming in the past, it's just business as usual.

Well, yes that is so and there have been ice ages as well. But prior to about 10,000 years ago, they were the result of the various earth orbital vagaries and rotation patterns and the warm and cool periods were simply the earth accommodating itself to those changes. The forests had not been cut down for timber and agriculture, the oceans were full of healthy fish the rain was clean and fresh, and the few million people who were hunting and gathering in small tribal groups generally died before they managed to cause too much damage.

Let's fast-forward to today. Depending upon where you live, your drinking water is either polluted or, if you are lucky, recycled sewage. The plant biomass which loves to produce oxygen from CO2 has been reduced by about 60%. The natural generation of CO2 has been supplemented by BILLIONS of tons a year that industrialization is spewing into the atmosphere. The fish are getting scarce, and the ones we CAN find are too toxic to eat safely. Wait....did I mention that the human population has increased from several million to over 6 BILLION and is growing daily despite the thousands of people who starve to death every week? You can look it up. http://www.worldometers.info/

Great....what are you doing about it? Did you join the Sierra Club to unload some guilt? Did you trade in that Suburban for a hybrid? Are you recycling your plastic and aluminum cans? Guess what? You aren't making a dent. You are doing NOTHING to help. You think you are, but what you are really doing is giving big corporations access to cheap, already refined materials so they can make more cheap cans and make more profit and providing your state a way to keep trash dumps empty longer while collecting a 5 or ten cent bounty on each container. Let me tell you why you are not helping. The mining company is in business to get as much ore out of the ground and processed in as short a time as possible. Quantity is how they stay competetive. The refinery is in the business of refining as much metal as they possibly can no matter who they buy it from. They need to sell more all the time to keep up with rising costs. It's that way all the way up and down the line. That's what free enterprise does. EVERY treatise you read on saving the environment says (and I paraphrase) "Everything, every choice, every move, every law, depends on the economy". And every one of them is wrong. The REAL problem is overpopulation, and it is not going to get better until about half the global population drops dead in one mass-extinction event. It will happen eventually. It has happened before. It could be H5N1 or it could be something much simpler.

As for your Prius hybrid, the trucks which get the cans to your local Wal-Mart are still using most of the fuel, along with jet aircraft. And chemical plants. And refineries. And power plants. God forbid you should miss American Idol in one room while three different shows are on in the rest of the house. And the sad part is that there is nothing you can do. The roller coaster is moving and you are merely along for the ride.

Now at first it seems as though these problems are simple, and a concerted effort could get us off the tracks before the train arrives. But nothing is simple. Try getting a concensus of where to go for dinner. And the problem is that almost no one understands the problems involved, certainly not lawmakers and world leaders. There is a lot to know about everything and it is all interrelated at some level. If you want to see how much YOU don't know, go read an article called 'The alternative genome' in the April 2005 Scientific American. Most people just automatically assume that someone (God or the leaders of the first-world countries) have everything under control. Nothing is further from the truth. The sky is not falling yet, but one can certainly see the foundation crumbling.

Today's book recommendations:

The Ancestor's Tale: A pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution, Richard Dawkins.

Guns, Germs and steel, the fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond.
Collapse, Jared Diamond.