Babble Ahead

The Recession Was Avoidable

By Leonard C Tekaat

Basically what has happened to our economy, the means of exchange has decreased significantly.

The Committee For Economic Reform and a Better Economic Future has developed an Alternative Economic Stimulus plan to restart our economy. It does not require the Federal government to create a huge deficit, to return consumer’s deposable income.

CSUB Professor of Economics Mark Evans was quoted as saying, we are going to have to live with large deficits for a long time, and there is no other way. We disagree with that statement. The Committee believes that there is another way. President Obama is relying on Keynesian Economics. John Maynard Keynes policies put governments into massive debt, to stimulate the economy and return people’s disposable income. Over time more government programs are created, increasing the size of government, as our economy cycles through periodic periods of recession and inflation.

Consumption and home creation represents 75% of the economic activity in our economy. The economy will not fully recover until the consumer’s financial condition and confidence improves. Investor confidence, in making long-term investments, needs to improve also. This will happen as the economy improves and when we enact the Zero Inflation Taxation Policy.

When the Federal Reserve lowered the Fed rate and the banks and other financial institutions could not follow the Fed’ lead, of lowering the cost of the means of exchange, the collapse of employment and the stock market occurred. If lower interest rates had been available, for credit worthy borrowers, the money supply would have quickly expanded, creating enough of the means of exchange for our economy to continue to work.

The recession would not have gotten out of control, causing the massive layoffs, decreasing people’s disposable income, there-by causing the economy to continue its downward spiral. Consumer and investor confidence was thus lost.

The enterprise economic system cannot operate efficiently, without the correct amount of the means of exchange (money) being in balance with available supply.

They are asking you for your endorsement and support of the Alternative Economic Stimulus Plan. They are asking you to please review it at their web site. They also want you to read the other economic policy papers first, so you will obtain a complete picture of why we are repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression. Without the changes we need to improve our economy, we will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past.

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7 Successful Stress Management Techniques

By Lyndsay Swinton

Everyone needs successful stress management techniques. Easy to learn and easy to implement, you can use them for your own stress management or teach them to help others manage theirs.
Manage your stress and be a healthier, happier and more pleasant person to be around. Let’s cut to the chase…

1. Make stress your friend

Acknowledge that stress is good and make stress your friend! Based on the body’s natural “fight or flight” response, that burst of energy will enhance your performance at the right moment. I’ve yet to see a top sportsman totally relaxed before a big competition. Use stress wisely to push yourself that little bit harder when it counts most.

2. Stress is contagious

Stressed people sneeze stress germs indiscriminately and before you know it, you are infected with stress germs too!

Protect yourself from stress germs by recognising stress in others and limiting your contact with them. Or if you’ve got the inclination, play stress doctor and teach them how to better manage their stress.

3. Copy good stress managers

When people around are losing their head, which keeps calm? What are they doing differently? What is their attitude? What language do they use? Are they trained and experienced?
Figure it out from afar or sit them down for a chat. Learn from the best stress managers and copy what they do.

4. Use heavy breathing.

You can trick your body into relaxing by using heavy breathing. Breathe in slowly for a count of 7 then breathe out for a count of 11. Repeat the 7-11 breathing until your heart rate slows down, your sweaty palms dry off and things start to feel more normal.

5. Stop stress thought trains

It is possible to tangle yourself up in a stress knot all by yourself. “If this happens, then that might happen and then we’re all up the creek!” Most of these things never happen, so why waste all that energy worrying needlessly?

Give stress thought-trains the red light and stop them in their tracks. Okay so it might go wrong – how likely is that, and what can you do to prevent it?

6. Know your stress hot spots and trigger points

Presentations, interviews, meetings, giving difficult feedback, tight deadlines…My heart rate is cranking up just writing these down!

Make your own list of stress trigger points or hot spots. Be specific. Is it only presentations to a certain audience that get you worked up? Does one project cause more stress than another? Did you drink too much coffee?

Knowing what causes you stress is powerful information, as you can take action to make it less stressful. Do you need to learn some new skills? Do you need extra resources? Do you need to switch to de-caffeinated coffee?

7. Eat, drink, sleep and be merry!

Lack of sleep, poor diet and no exercise wreaks havoc on our body and mind. Kind of obvious, but worth mentioning as it’s often ignored as a stress management technique. Listen to your mother and don’t burn the candle at both ends!

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A Unique Way to Go Green

By Acline Wyle

Renting college textbooks or recycling old books is a unique way to go green because the manufacturing and delivery process of new books is energy inefficient and wasteful. Not to mention, by renting books instead of buying brand new ones every semester, you can really save a lot of money. Renting instead of buying also has a tremendously positive effect on the environment.

Go Green, Rent Textbooks

Each year, 20 million trees are cut down for books, and 4 million of those trees are for textbooks alone. This statistic is staggering when you consider the amount of old and unused books that we all have lying around our homes. Recycling the books would be a good eco-friendly solution, as would donating them to some sort of thrift store or library.

Perhaps the best way to fix the problem from the onset would be to rent the books because that way when you are done with them, somebody else will be able to use them. This would end the cycle of waste because a rented book is one less unused book lying around your house.

With regards to college textbooks, every college student and parent is well aware of how ridiculously expensive they can be. The really frustrating thing is that when you try to sell them back at the end of the semester, you only get a fraction of what you paid in the first place. Buying university books is clearly a lose-lose proposition. Therefore, renting the books would not only help save the environment, it would help you save a lot of money.

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Beating Your Fear of Public Speaking

By Dana Bristol-Smith

Knocking knees, butterflies (who came up with that word?) in your stomach, sweaty palms, quavering voice. We’ve all been there – some of us more than others. I’m going to share with you some of the tricks of the trade to help manage and reduce your anxiety before and during your presentation. These methods are tried and true and have helped many presenters.

The first time is always the worst and it gets better from there.

In 1991, I gave my first presentation to a large audience. My audience was 150 fifth and six grade students in an outside courtyard of an elementary school. I was scheduled to give a 35-minute student assembly that explained a collection of international artifacts (masks, musical instruments, hats, and other interesting items). It was a program designed to increase multicultural understanding. I was so fired up about the topic, and thought that it was such an important subject that I thought I could deliver the program.

Well, of course everything went wrong! The wind picked up and knocked some of the items off the display table (the kids thought this was funny, I didn’t). The microphone had that horrible screeching feedback. My knees shook the whole time, my voice quavered, my heart pounded – and I felt like it was going on forever. I got through my content somehow and looked at my watch. I gave a 35-minute presentation in 15-minutes! I think that I probably forgot to breathe.

After packing up my items and loading them in my car, I collapsed in the driver’s seat. When my heart starting beating normally, I had a realization. My realization was that I did deliver the program, yes–terribly, but I did finish it and it would probably never again be that bad. From that point on, I learned something from every program I gave; how to keep the audience engaged, how to test AV equipment BEFORE I started, how to breathe normally and speak at the same time. The list goes on and on. In three years, I delivered this program to more than 100,000 students and teachers.

Today, I help adults develop the skills of public speaking. It seems that everyone has some degree of nervousness or anxiety. What I know is that you can live through those feelings and that over time they get easier and easier to deal with. Give these strategies a try and see if they will help you too.

How about having a conversation?

Use your mental energy to think of your next presentation as a conversation. You have conversations all day, every day! Do you get nervous before a conversation? Most conversations are non-threatening experiences, just a way for two or more people to communicate something. How is a presentation different than that? Try to think of your presentation as a conversation, just with a few more people. See if that eases your mind and nerves.

Make some new friends in the audience.

Most people are nervous in front of an audience of strangers. What would happen if you had a friend in the audience, or a group of friends? Would you feel more comfortable? Next time you have to give a presentation to a group you don’t know – do something revolutionary! Introduce yourself, shake hands, and greet as many of the audience as possible before your talk begins. That way, when you’re standing in the front of the room looking out, it is no longer a sea of strangers, but a friendly group, because you met some of the people first. You’ll want to find them in the audience and make eye contact, and it won’t be too hard, because they’ll probably be smiling at you.

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes for a moment. Imagine that you are attending a special seminar at work. How would you feel if before the seminar, the speaker took a moment to introduce herself to you? Would you be a more receptive listener to what she had to say? I bet your answer is yes!

How about smiling?

Smiling has a physiological affect on us – it helps to calm our nerves and make us feel better. It also has the added bonus of making us appear more pleasant, comfortable and happy – definite positive characteristics of a presenter. Often times, the audience will mirror the expression of the presenter. So guess what happens when you smile? You got it; your audience will be more likely to smile back at you.

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How to Recognize Stress Before it Turns Into Anger

By Dr. Tony Fiore

After a stressful day as a computer programmer, Jim pulled into his driveway. The children’s toys were scattered on the walkway to the house.

He immediately began noticing slight tension in his muscles and apprehension in his stomach. Entering his house, his wife ignored him while she talked with her sister on the telephone. His heart started beating a little faster.

Looking around, he noticed disarray; nothing was picked up, the house was a mess. Irritation and frustration started to settle in. Finally, as his feelings grew, he exploded and began yelling at his wife and children.

Stress may trigger anger:

Stress is often the trigger that takes us from feeling peaceful to experiencing uncomfortable angry feelings in many common situations such as the one described above.

Stress is most easily defined as a series of bodily responses to demands made upon us called stressors.

These “demands” or stressors can be negative (such as coping with a driver who cuts in front of you on the freeway) or positive (such as keeping on a tour schedule while on vacation).

Stressors may be external to you (like work pressure) or internal (like expectations you have of yourself or feeling guilty about something you did or want to do).

Whether the stressor is external or internal, scientists have discovered that the major systems of the body work together to provide one of the human organism’s most powerful and sophisticated defenses; the stress response which you may know better as “fight-or-flight.”

This response helps you to cope with stressors in your life. To do so, it activates and coordinates the brain, glands, hormones, immune system, heart, blood and lungs.

Avoid Jim’s destructive behavior toward his loved ones. Before your stress response turns into anger or aggression, use these strategies to get it under control:

Read your personal warning lights: Becoming aware of your stress response is the first step to managing it. This means listening to your body, being aware of your negative emotions, and observing your own behavior when under stress.

For instance, notice muscle tension, pounding heart, raising voice, irritation, dry mouth, or erratic movements.

What you see is what you get: For a potential stressor to affect us -stress us out – we have to first perceive it or experience it as a stressor.

Gaining a new perspective on the stressing situation can often drastically change the effect it has on us. Our stress response can indeed be a response (something we can control) instead of a knee-jerk reaction (which is automatic).

Examples: Cut off on the freeway? “It is not personal. That guy has a problem. I will stay calm.” Bullied by a co-worker? “If I react, he wins. Later, I will privately let him know how I feel about what he did. If that doesn’t work, I’ll discuss it with our manager.”

Stress-Guard your life: You can also make many life-style changes to reduce or minimize feeling stressed-out, even if you can’t change some of your actual stressors.

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Solving Climate Change – Follow the Money

By Peter Meisen

Climate change is the challenge of our time. It’s not our only global problem: terrorism, water shortages, fishery depletion, pervasive hunger and poverty all persist on the planet. Yet climate affects everything, and how we deal with this issue will make matters better or worse for all the rest. Over the past century, our energy investments have created a wealthy, dynamic global economy. We now understand that continuing this path is unsustainable as fossil fuel resources decline and environmentally destructive carbon dioxide emissions accumulate — threatening our economy and way of life.

The only way to shift the direction of climate change is to shift our energy investments. The International Energy Agency projects that $9-$15 trillion will be invested in the next few decades to meet the world’s growing energy demand. To tackle climate change, it is essential that renewables, clean technologies and energy efficiency receive the lion’s share of this investment. Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, pension funds and individual investors will drive this transition – and benefit handsomely. Formerly known as “alternative energy,” this new sector has become mainstream, creating thousands of new jobs in research and manufacturing. The opportunities are global, as India and China strive to raise living standards of 2 billion people.

So far, these two nations have followed the same energy path as the west. Solving climate change will require both the west and east to cooperate and invest in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Growth rates for renewables are impressive, with wind and solar industries increasing 20% – 40% each year since 2000. The commercialization of these renewables has attracted Shell, General Electric, British Petroleum and other energy multinationals to initiate significant financial commitments. Yet solar, wind and geothermal remain less than 2% of the global energy mix, even though some experts suggest that these renewables could supply 50% of our energy requirements in 2050.

That would be a 2,500% increase from today’s level, offering investors strong return potential. Efficiencies are coming from government policy and technical breakthroughs. Several countries and states are banishing the incandescent bulb for the more efficient compact florescent (CFL). Looking forward, the light-emitting diode (LED) is the next generation of energy efficient lighting, using just a fraction of today’s wattage-wasting bulbs. Gas-electric hybrid cars get 2-3 times the mileage of our current Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard fleets, with the promise of plug-in hybrids getting over 100 miles per gallon. Breakthroughs will double solar cell efficiency and windmills have grown to megawatt-size turbines. Each of these new technologies is a huge business opportunity, creating new jobs while improving both efficiency and performance.

The first warnings about carbon dioxide emissions came 50 years ago. Like cigarettes, the consequences seemed so far in the future that doing nothing was easier than making any real change. Now, the leading scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have projected a warmer world, rising sea levels, stronger storms, species extinction and spreading topical diseases. Minimizing these effects would clearly benefit all humanity. Most everyone has now seen the Earth at Night visual from NASA — a beautiful nighttime mosaic of our planet from space. Presently, two-thirds of all those lights come from fossil fuel power generation.

Coal and natural gas remain the fuels of choice for generating electricity, while petroleum is used predominately for cars, trucks, trains and planes. We are truly addicted to fossil fuels to run our modern society. If we continue building and funding the world’s energy needs as we did in the last century, we deserve the consequences. If we embrace the “energy revolution” (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, September 24, 2007), investments in clean energy solutions will flourish and dominate the 21st Century. Climate change will be solved by shifting investments from fossil fuels to renewables, clean tech and energy efficiency. To track our progress, follow the money.

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Opportunities in an Age of Economic Uncertainty

By Carlos G. Garcia

The current economic situation has been described as one of the worst recessions in recent history, and as a possible depression not seen since the Great Depression. Most economists agree that the current economic crisis has probably not hit the bottom, and that the road to recovery will be long and hard.

Personally, I believe that the recovery is within our reach.

If we take a look at how the current economic crisis is evolving, we tend to see a trend and what some call a vicious circle. Let me explain. Companies around the world are feeling the economic punch and are looking for ways to become profitable and to stay in business. Most companies look for ways to lower their costs by cutting salaries, re-negotiating salaries, and maybe even laying off workers.

If salaries are reduced, or if employees are let go, their spending power will be affected. People will start to re-evaluate their spending and will focus on covering basic necessities. By examining this effect, it becomes obvious that people will start to spend less and will try to save more. By doing so, they start consuming less goods that are not basic necessity.

Now, if people start spending less, companies that produce goods are affected directly by having lower sales volumes. This translates into companies having a difficult time covering expenses, and thus having to look for ways to cut costs, resulting in cutting salaries and laying off workers.

There you have it! The cycle begins again. Of course, one of the simple laws of economics comes into play: demand and supply. If the demand for a certain product decreases, the supply of this product has to adjust itself to the demand, in order to not have to lower the price of the goods. This makes sense, and is one of the primary reasons for the economic crisis, along with inflated prices for certain goods, the famous NINJA (no income, no job) credits, and in some cases, manipulation of information.

You are probably thinking, referencing the title of this article, what does this have to do with opportunity.

Well, opportunity is a key factor for getting out of this cycle. No matter what the economic situation is, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to find new ways of generating income. Like some say: “The crisis brings out the best in us, it creates new ideas, it helps the creative process, and it makes us tougher and wiser”

With this concept in mind, one of the things we need, is the right attitude. By right attitude I mean, the will to fight, work hard, and find new ways of generating income so that the current economic crisis does not affect us.

If you sit at work all day, and then at home all night thinking only about the crisis, and how it is affecting, you are not helping yourself. You have to change your state of mind, and try to see the positive side of it. Think about how you can survive this crisis and what you can do to come out on top.

The basic concept follows the line of not depending on one single stream of income, like a job. You have to create multiple streams of income, so that if one fails, you still have the others to rely on. Basically, the more income streams you have, the better.

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Ethics in Speaking: A Practical Point of View

By Stephen D. Boyd

Often managers have to deliver presentations with unpleasant content. The vice president has to announce that there is a hiring freeze or a downsizing. The human resource director speaks to the employees about a benefits package with fewer benefits. Because executives are often speaking in difficult situations, the more credibility they can develop, the more the content will be considered and accepted. Speakers will have little or no impact on audiences if audience members don’t respect them and what they have to say.

What makes us trust a speaker or believe that he or she is a reliable source? Whom can we trust to have our best interests at heart? Let’s look at some practical ways a speaker can maintain and enhance credibility.

Act in ways consistent with the message of the presentation. This can be as simple as showing concern in tone of voice and facial expression when talking about an issue that is facing the company. Acting disinterested or unconcerned when presenting bad news can offend your listeners. Showing enthusiasm in delivery by quicker movements, more variety, and a faster rate of speech when reading an exciting climax of a positive presentation can produce the same enthusiasm in your audience.

A student began a persuasive speech by spreading garbage out on a table. She said, “What do all of these pieces of trash have in common? They can all be recycled.” She gave a good speech on the need for recycling and how to set up community recycling programs. She finished to a nice round of applause; then she gathered up all of the recyclables from the table–and threw them away in the wastebasket in the corner. She obviously didn’t understand the need for speakers to act in ways consistent with their messages in order to maintain credibility.

Good preparation is an ethical requirement as well as a practical one. Your audience has given you time and an opportunity, and audience members deserve to hear your best effort. That only comes through careful preparation. If the audience can tell you didn’t prepare for them specifically, they will feel betrayed and won’t respond positively to your message. Thus the executive should start preparing several days or weeks before an important presentation is delivered. It is hard to cram for a speech, and the audience can tell when preparation has not been adequate.

Show respect for your audience. Don’t insult your audience in any way. Racial slurs and profanity are obviously unethical, but in addition, don’t show disrespect for people’s gender, backgrounds, positions, appearances, or nationalities. Don’t put people down because of their lack of knowledge of a topic; sometimes their lack of information is the very reason you have been asked to speak. Don’t embarrass any member of your audience. Don’t play a joke on anyone without seeking permission first. Even if you do receive permission, playing a joke on an audience member can backfire because the rest of your group might become fearful they will bear the brunt of your next joke, causing them to lose trust in you. Poke fun at yourself instead.

Base your conclusions in your presentation on clear evidence. Support your assertions with relevant facts, statistics, and testimony. Keep track of your sources and be ready to produce them if an audience member has a question. Don’t make assertions you can’t support or justify. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca write in their book, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, that whatever support you use should be able to satisfy the “universal audience”–that group of all reasonable, rational people. In your outline each major point should show a variety of evidence. If that is not the case, then eliminate the point or, if it fits, place the evidence with another point you are making.

Choose topics that are consistent with your personal beliefs. Pick topics important to you that you live out on a daily basis. You might be able to craft effective speeches advocating views you do not agree with, but you will be much more effective and ethical if you advocate opinions you actually hold. If you advocate a position which is not something you feel completely comfortable with, this will be communicated to your audience by your delivery style. In choosing material for your presentation, one major criterion is how strongly you feel about the point or support. This is an excellent way to cut out materials when you have more content than time allotted.

Respect the time of your audience. Know what time you are expected to finish–and finish at that time. It is an insult to your audience members and an abuse of your opportunity to speak to keep them ten, fifteen, or thirty minutes more than what is expected of you.

History gives us a good example of the power of an actual presentation to create credibility. The year was 1952, and Dwight Eisenhower was running for president with Richard Nixon as his vice-presidential candidate. Charges surfaced, however, that Nixon had illegally used some campaign contributions, and Eisenhower considered dropping Nixon from the ticket. In what became known as the “Checkers Speech,” Nixon defended himself in a 30-minute, nationally televised speech. With his wife Pat sitting in the background, he defended his ethics, at one point holding up a piece of paper he claimed was the result of an audit of his books finding him blameless. Nixon did admit, however, that some supporters had given his children a dog. He said the kids had named the dog “Checkers,” and no matter what anyone said, he wasn’t going to let them take that dog away. He concluded by asking people to telegraph or mail to the Republican National Committee their opinion of whether or nothe should continue to run with Eisenhower. The overwhelmingly positive response assured his place in the campaign.

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A-Z of Global Warming: Carbon Dioxide

By: Simon Rosser

We are well into our alphabetic A to Z journey on global warming. C for Carbon dioxide is one of the main players in the global warming problem. Carbon dioxide, chemical symbol co2 is a chemical compound composed of one carbon and two oxygen atoms.

CO2 is present in the Earth’s atmosphere at a low concentration, around 0.038% by volume, and is one of many gases that make up Earth’s atmosphere. CO2 is measured in parts per million by volume of air (PPMV). Atmospheric carbon dioxide comes from many natural sources including volcanic eruptions, the combustion of organic matter, the respiration of living aerobic organisms, and unfortunately from manmade (anthropogenic) sources, which we all know from the news is being linked to global warming and climate change.

Since the industrial revolution particularly the mid nineteenth century, the burning of fossil fuels for energy to provide electricity, power factories, homes and for all our transport needs has released massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Not only the burning of fossil fuels, but changes in the use of the land for agriculture and deforestation has further added to global manmade CO2 levels. According to the World Wildlife fund some 29 gigatons which is 29 billion metric tons of CO2 was added to the atmosphere in 2004 alone from burning coal, oil and gas.

If we go back 250 years or so, to pre- industrial times, usually taken to be around 1750, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were around 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). However levels of the gas have been increasing steadily ever since.

HOW DO WE KNOW THIS?

Well, pioneering scientist Charles Keeling (1928-2005) started taking atmospheric CO2 measurements in 1958 from Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Those measurements have been recorded and are now known as The Keeling Curve. Charles Keeling was the professor of oceanography at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) which is in San Diego, USA, and he followed the work of another eminent scientist and director of the SIO, Roger Revelle. Dr Revelle was instrumental in creating the Geophysical Year in 1958 and SIO’s first programme looking at atmospheric CO2 back in 1956.

Monthly CO2 measurements were collected from a height of 3397 metres (11,140 feet) at the Mauna Loa Observatory situated on the slopes of Earth’s largest volcano, Mauna Loa in Hawaii which was chosen for its remoteness to populations and vegetation so as not to skewer the readings.

Measurements have been taken over a 50 year period between 1958 and present, which show a rise in CO2 levels of 70 ppmv from around 315 ppmv to around their current level of 385 ppmv. The effects of CO2 in the atmosphere can even be measured on a cyclical basis, and this can be seen in the saw toothed keeling graph. Because there is greater land area, and thus far more plant life in the Northern Hemisphere compared to the Southern Hemisphere, there is an annual fluctuation of about 5 ppmv peaking in May and reaching a minimum in October. This corresponds to the Northern Hemisphere growing season. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere drops towards spring when uptake by the plants and trees by photosynthesis is greatest. The opposite occurs in winter when the plants die off and CO2 levels increase again.

Continuous readings in this way have only been taken since 1958, however scientists have discovered that prior to the industrial era, circa 1750, CO2 levels stood at around 280 ppmv and this data has been revealed from air trapped in ice core records, taken from both the Antarctic and Arctic. Perhaps the most startling is the fact that CO2 levels are now around 85 ppmv higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years. Records from ice core records go back that far and have shown atmospheric CO2 levels to range from 180-300 ppmv during that period. The level of CO2 in our atmosphere now stands at 385 ppmv, and is increasing steadily.

The Keeling curve has become one of the most recognisable images in modern science as it shows with no uncertainty the effects of humankind’s fossil fuel pollution of Earth’s atmosphere.

CO2 levels have increased by 37% since pre-industrial times and have been increasing by an average of almost 1.4 ppmv a year since measurements began in 1958, although some months the figure has been higher, sometimes lower. In the last ten years however, the average increase appears to be around 1.9 ppmv each year, which indicates the rate of increase is increasing.

Whilst CO2 is a natural greenhouse gas, and important in natural concentrations to maintain Earth’s climate, anthropogenic CO2 is now pushing up Earth’s temperature. Earth’s natural sinks, like the Amazon rainforest and the oceans struggle to absorb the additional CO2 now being added to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. It is a know scientific fact that higher levels of greenhouse gases, of which CO2 is a component cause a warming of Earth’s atmosphere. If CO2 is not kept in check and continues to rise at current levels it will eventually cause Earth’s temperature to increase to levels which maybe critical to life on Earth.

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An Arena of Thoughts on Global Warming

By: Aazdak Alisimo

Is global warming the biggest threat to us or not. The debate seems to sway back and forth depending on who you happen to be listening to at the time. So, who should you believe? Read the following and decide for yourself.

Global warming – at least the modern nightmare vision – is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world’s politicians and policy makers are not. – Professor David Bellamy

We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late… The science is clear. The global warming debate is over. – Arnold Schwarzenegger

Man has reached the point where his impact on the climate can be as significant as nature’s. – Warrick, Joby.

If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming and Windows. – Dave Barry

In fact, even the current administration now is releasing recent reports indicating that climate change is real, that global warming is occurring, that it is heavily influenced by man-made objects and that it is something we cannot ignore any longer. – Ron Kind

The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now. – Louis Proyect

While human-induced global warming is not going to turn present-day Earth into present-day Mars, global warming is dire enough that our most distinguished scientists recently concluded that as many as 1 million species on the planet could be extinct by 2050 if affairs do not change. – Jay Inslee

It used to be controversial whether smoking caused lung cancer, it used to be controversial whether HIV caused AIDS. Now, there are a few mavericks who deny those things. In the case of climate change, I think the debate is going the same way in that there is a strong consensus that it is a serious matter. – Lord Martin Rees

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