Lessons Learned-Attack of the Hostile Bloggers!

"Save the Humans!"
Anyone else see the twisted humor in this?


Yesterday I wrote an entry at another blogsite that was more a social experiment than an actual opinion piece about global warming. What I thought would start a lively debate degraded into name calling and personal attacks toward me because I had the audacity to say that maybe global warming could be a good thing in which we humans shouldn't intervene. The entry was mostly written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, but a few fellow bloggers didn't see any humor in it. So, as one of the bloggers informed me, I am not a scientist who studies the earth, I'm not a biologist, climatologist, meteorologist, oceanographer, or anything like that. I am, however, a social scientist, and my experiment with human reaction to a polar opposite opinion proved to be quite interesting and I learned a few lessons from those attacking bloggers.


1. Sarcasm, satire and humor should never be used when discussing something as emotionally charged as global warming.


2. If you start a blogument (blog-argument) you should have thick skin and a cold heart.


3. Blogs don't necessarily make good petri dishes for social experiments.


4. I am an enemy of the planet but I recycle, use those ghastly flourescent light bulbs, catch rainwater to water my garden, have reduced my household water consumption and have changed my driving habits in order to use less gasoline--yes! I am the enemy because apparently these things don't make any different and I am stupid for doing them.


5. If you want to persuade someone to come around to your way of thinking, it isn't a good idea to call them stupid, ignorant, arrogant, or haughty. You are almost guaranteed to push the person farther away.


6. For all the arguing and name calling that went on throughout the day yesterday, not one of the passionate name callers offered any economomically feasible solution to the problem of global warming, which seems to be the same thing that happens when the debate is taken up on a much larger scale.



So, even though I was dragged through the mud by these very opinionated bloggers, I have come to a very important conclusion about global warming, and it is this: Nothing will ever change until and unless the richer and more powerful countries (not just the United States!) of this world decide to work together to change the way their countries do things, little ol' me just ain't gonna make a difference!