Do we really need more proof of global warming?

ENVIRONMENT - This a little off topic but I will to relate it how men and women think...

I got this amusing photo in my email today with the caption "Proof of Global Warming" and after laughing I thought to myself do we really need more proof beyond that which we already have?

I mean seriously. 100% of scientists agree that global warming and climate change is real and its happening around us. The only naysayers are people who don't even work as scientists but are "science advisors" for conservative politicians and the oil/coal industries. No REAL scientist has ever come out with proof global warming doesn't exist.

Who are you going to believe? Rush Limbaugh and his cronies? Or the scientific community with degrees and PhDs and the actual data on rising global temperatures?

For fun I did some Google image searches for words like global warming proof and global warming before after to see what came up. There is a lot of images available, some jokes, but most of them serious.

But do we (men and women) need visual proof? Or do we need to wait until global warming effects us personally before we realize its real?

The oil/coal industries know global warming is real, but they're refusing to acknowledge it and they are determined to keep the public ignorant or at least skeptical enough so that politicians won't do anything about it that might hurt their industries.

That much will be pretty obvious to anyone who reads a newspaper and can read between the lines.

But what about the rest of the population? The people who don't read newspapers, who aren't very intellectual or scientific in their reasoning and instead think this is all "natural" or god is doing it to punish the world?

After all god drowned the world once, what is to stop him from burning it the second time around?

But if we ignore god, then its Mother Nature isn't it? The Great Flood, Ice Ages, Global Warming... that sounds like Mother Nature's department doesn't it?

We all know Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Mother Nature don't exist, but the concept is still the same... nature is doing this, but its not very natural this time around.

And is it really so hard to think humans have the ability to change the temperature of the world around us? We've overrun this planet. There are is 6.7 billion of us and in 2008 we pumped an extra 33,534,965,760 metric tons of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas which causes temperatures to go up) into the atmosphere.

And the silly thing about CO2 is that the more there is, the more effective it is at raising temperatures. In the last hundred years CO2 levels have gone up from 290 ppm to 405 ppm. That is a 40% increase and is entirely man made.

The point is that greenhouse gases, global warming and climate change are all scientifically proven. Its the naysayers and skeptics (whom have no scientific background) who have managed to sway the ignorant.

According to a 2005 Gallup poll only 69% of Americans realize that global warming is real. More so there is a gender gap between men and women. 81% of American women know that global warming is real, whereas only 57% of men have clued in on this fact.

So why is it that men are less accepting of scientific evidence? Is it because men are more stubborn? Do they think they know better? Is it because men are less likely to have a college or university education? Maybe.

But an interesting factor is when you compare Republican men/women to Democrat men/women. Republican women are almost twice as likely to realize global warming is real when compared to Republican men, whereas Democratic men and women are on equal ground.

This tells you something very important. The naysayers are almost exclusively all white conservative men. Maybe they've been reading too many pamphlets from the oil industry. These are the kind of men who are still convinced smoking and guns don't kill people and they will argue until they are blue in the face to defend their right to be lazy and pollute as much as they want to.

I've met people like that. The only way they will ever change their minds is if Global Warming effects them personally. Only then will they see the proof in front of them. Until then they will continue to do as they please.

Lets pretend for a moment that we live to see the northern polar ice caps melt and the sea levels rise enough to flood Manhattan island. Would that be proof enough? I'll bet that even then there will be ignorant people who are still naysaying, saying its just a freak of nature rather than humans meddling with nature.

Hopefully by then politicians learn its time to just IGNORE THE SKEPTICS.