Thursday, January 31, 2008

Does This Mean That I AM or AM NOT a Conservative?

I've been puzzling this for a while now...

BACKGROUND: There is, as of this moment, exactly one planet in the entire universe, that we know that will support human life. (Hint: you are there.) This planet has exactly one atmosphere. (Hint: you are breathing it in.) As we burn fossil fuels we add carbon dioxide and water vapor to this atmosphere. It is a known scientific fact that these two molecules absorb infrared light. When the amounts of these molecules go up, more infrared light is absorbed. This will produce an increase of heat content of the atmosphere. These same burning processes produce particulates which scatter sun light and reduce the amount of light that reaches the surface of the planet. When there is less light reaching the surface, the temperature goes down. So the particulates reduce the heat content of the atmosphere. Does burning increase the planets temperature or reduce it? Answer: Both. OK, but which wins? Answer: The data is not yet clear.

What is clear is that we as a species are changing our atmosphere, in ways that we can not predict. Will the temperature of the planet increase, decrease, or stay the same? I don't know. No one really knows. But as a Conservative, I believe that we should conserve our atmosphere, not do uncontrolled experiments on it.

John McCain seems to agree with that point of view. For this he is called a "RINO", and "liberal", and other names. This is why I'm puzzled. I believe that my reasoning is clear, consistent, and most surely conservative, but the so called Repubilcan party leaders (and others) choose to call this "liberal".

Can anyone out there explain this to me and, please, does this make me a conservative, or not?

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