Global Warming my @$$

[sdca7]

I think it odd, too, how polarizing such issues are. I worked at an Ecology lab as a post-doc for a while back in the 80's and 90's. Environmental modeling is very complex. The many factors influencing short and long term climate cycles are, and have been, well known to researchers. John Coleman only mentions a few of the issues in validating the models. The things he mentions are not a very strong argument against global warming, but he does illustrate the difficulties of predicting long term climate changes. There is plenty of evidence and reasonable theory to at the very least think that we are impacting our environment.

 

You will find that most scientists are in fact the biggest skeptics of new theories - they are trained to be. And they hardly get rich doing it! Yes, there are financial and career incentives for proving theories, but for every one out there trying to prove his theory, there are many more questioning it. For all of the potential pitfalls of the scientific method, there are also many safeguards to keep us on course.

 

I wonder if the polarization of our society on so many issues will eventually move the moderates to speak up more. It is a curious world that we live in - over the last few hundred years our societies have changed dramatically. Sometimes we have been able to anticipate the changes, more often not!

 

I drove my car back from the track yesterday through bumper to bumper traffic for 250 miles, three to eight lanes wide. Most of the cars (including mine!) having one sole inhabitant. What can I say?

[JohnK]

I keep seeing this as an opportunity seized by people who want to holler at whoever they feel like for whatever reasons they may have.

 

Global Warming is the thing that's being recorded, and the RESULT of the Earth becoming warmer is predicted to be significant "Climate Change". The fact that the Earth is warmer doesn't mean my particular back yard is necessarily going to see particularly less snow when I happen look out the window. And anyway, a snowfall in my back yard that I observe isn't my climate, it's my WEATHER. However, if my back yard happens to have a 60 mile long glacier in it, and I observe that glacier disappear by melting over 10 or 20 years, that is very likely due to a change in the climate of my back yard.

 

It seems to be a universal habit that people feel free to criticize experts in a field that is very complex and that they have no significant expertise in (with apologies to any previous commentators who happen to be senior climate modelers at NOAA).

 

Alternatively, there is the precedent set by our economic system. A number of years ago a senior and highly respected scientist at NASA (Hansen?) posed a question to his fellows: "Is it possible that all the (industrial) human activity is putting enough matter into the atmosphere to affect the climate?" Energy companies, behaving like good capitalists, saw any answer to this kind of question as a threat to their profitability and began a serious disinformation campaign against any research which addressed this question, merrily handing out firebrands and pitchforks to the rabble they roused (or loyal employees of their companies). If I remember correctly, Congress got these companies to stop running "deceptive advertising" in this regard.

[Greg350]

Makes a change from everyone asking how to get a smog excemption.