[Quixote]

I’m not surprised at the variety of responses this posting has generated. Global warming exists. Global warming doesn’t exist. Global warming is a purely natural phenomenon. (Weren’t the Koch brothers surprised?) A politician is mocked. (Don’t know Senator Imhofe.) Individuals (like Al Gore) are suspect if (1) they believe in global warming and (2) they become rich or more rich. (Personally I object way more to those who get rich from the human and property destruction of war, which we’ve seen more than once in our lifetimes.) Some have “agendas” leading them, for one example, to tear down this “popular” news story by the Weather Channel (which, after all, is not a pure academic setting performing significant and heavily documented research in an area where a controlled experiment is virtually impossible). It’s not “warming,” it’s a coming ice age. Wow! or Whew!

But where is the concern for those isolated souls who “settled” (likely many centuries ago) on low-lying islands or coasts and whose homes are disappearing under the waves, “subduction” notwithstanding. You can be sure that if global warming affected us the way it’s affecting these folks, some of whom already have had to be displaced from their homes of many generations, we might be less _________ [fill in the blank, depending on one’s views and “agendas”] and instead be more genuinely concerned about this issue and its human effect. That’s why I mentioned Florida—our home state—and the effect of rising sea levels stemming from global warming in a finite number of years. How easy it is for us to give at most a moment’s thought to something halfway around the world and then go back to our daily lives….