Are we joiners or thinkers?

In the third installment of the Biology 4243g lecture series, Dr. Graham Smith from the department of geography at University of Western Ontario talked about ecomyths, specifically global warming. The key points in his lecture were:

•Smith beliefs Global Warming is a myth created by politicians for power and money.
•Smith claims that climate is very dynamic and complex therefore is poorly understood.
•He claims that governments use media such as emotive pictures to promote alarmism, in order for people to belief on an idea such as global warming and thereby justifying government spending.
•Says that CO2 is not to blame as it is a trace gas in the air.
•He also defined two key terms Climategate which is the misconduct by scientist to manipulate data in favour of global warming and Axiomatic Dogma which are statements that sound too evident to question or provide proof.
•Finally, Smith says that politics and science are not the same, and when they mix, they take advantage of the public’s criteria.

What I learned from Dr Smith was that we should not conform with one view, just because our government leaders promote an idea or say that something is not good for us, doesn’t mean we have to believe them. We should permit ourselves to hear both sides of the coin and draw our own opinion.
Something I found intriguing was that according to Dr Smith, politicians benefit from Global Warming, to an extent that they have to manipulate scientific data to sound convincing, making everyone reach one consensus and regulate their economy. Something I found controversial was that the sceptics, the ones that don’t believe in Global Warming are gaining as much as the pro-global warming crowd. Because companies pay sceptics to denying global warming, so companies don’t have to start making new changes. Believing this is a myth also causes people to be lay back about the way they are living today. Thus, over spending sources like hydro, oil and water.
I haven’t made up my mind yet, if Global Warming is a myth or not, but I don’t agree with Dr Smith that natural disasters and climate fluctuations happen naturally. I think everything happens for a reason. The fact that things are happening simultaneously in many places is not coincidence. For example the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the massive snow storms in Europe and North America, and the unstoppable rains and floods in Colombia, Venezuela and Australia.
Even though CO2 is a natural component of our air and it is important for photosynthesis, I think that CO2 is partly to blame, because the lack of threes to clean the air has caused accumulation of CO2 and everything in excess is not healthy. One thing that I do agree on is that politics want power and  meetings such as Copenhagen or Cancun are a waste of time and money. Governments never reach to an agreement, they only talk and no actions or improvement are seen. Also the media, which is a way for politicians to induce fear, always keeps saying that the world is coming to an end.
In collusion, just because something sounds right or intelligent doesn’t mean it is true, we cannot just support a cause because someone higher in academic knowledge than us says is right or not. We should investigate and agree on what we consider is moral. Just keep in my mind that if we choose  not to belief in Global Warming, doesn’t mean we should stop caring and worrying for the environment and how future generations will handle it.