Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

The left doesn't need "more converts to expose the right smear machine." What the left needs to expose to itself is that the efforts of the left's smear machine to smear the right is what is actually smearing the left. Turn off your own smear machine and see what I mean.

How would global warming be reduced if the USA and Britain were to conform to the terms of the Kyoto treaty?

In the process of determining the insurability of a rather large risk awhile back, I needed to know the probability of a major earthquake occurring in a particular location. I inquired at the University of New Mexico Geology Department and from there was referred to a retired scientist who was then living near Socorro NM some 70 miles south of Albuquerque. He was cited as the state's foremost authority in past, present, and future geology and climatology. In Socorro on other business, I called him. He was on his way to lunch and asked me to join him.

The earthquake issue was quickly settled--8.0 or higher probability sometime in the next thousand years--and we chit chatted about the unusual weather etc. Global warming came up. He had read all the books, including Silent Spring. He had read all the studies and looked at all the supporting data available to him.

His conclusion: there is insufficient experience to conclude that irreversible global warming is a trend at this time. Every 10,000 years or so--give or take a few millenia--there has generally been a significant climate shift, sometimes of major proportions, sometimes of lesser proportions. We are in a time frame where that could reasonably be expected to be happening, but we have insufficient experience with recording weather and analyzing ice cores, etc. to come to a definitive conclusion.

He was convinced, based on the data he has seen, that human activity has insignificant impact on any global weather patterns. As a scientist he was open to be convinced otherwise, but so far the 'evidence' presented was uncompelling to him. Re the thousands of scientists who have signed onto the global warming theory, he said it has always been so. A very few expend the considerable time and resources necessary to do a comprehensive scientific study. Everybody else jumps on somebody's band wagon after the study is completed. When there are conflicting conclusions, some, along with their scholarly entourages, are going to be wrong. It is his opinion that if global warming is occurring, it is a natural event and no human scheme can be devised to stop it. He is of the opinion that most scientists with no particular agenda have come to that same conclusion.

I don't know the political inclinations of this gentleman. I do know he is no longer beholden to academia and he is not nor has ever been beholden to big oil, big energy, etc. or to any funding source. He has no apparent ax to grind other than his own reputation.

It just seems to me that before we expend enormous national treasure, jeopardize the economy, and compromise our chosen lifestyles, we should make sure we're not basing policy on junk science. Remember that the scientific journals all once agreed that the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it.

The flat earth advocates are long gone, except for some christians that continue to believe there's a bible god.

I'm not that sure about it, c.i.: the earth isn't older than 6,000 years - how could you judge such?

And the ones who insist we still should have gone into Iraq because Saddam was "suspected" of having WMD.

And the Grand Canyon was a result of the flood depicted in the Bible.

Chrissee, Did you attend the San Francisco demonstration against the war yesterday?

Expending enormous national treasure on killing, however, is not problematic. What's the appropriate term here? Junk compassion? Junk morality? Junk christianity?

Three years ago, Bush's own science council stated that (contrary to what was the standing position of the Bush administration and other related voices in business continued to maintain) that global warming was real, that it was significant, and that human agency was likely a significant causal factor. Bush's comment in response, "I read what those bureaucrats said." Junk honesty. Junk responsibility. Junk president.


Well, the church insisted. Telescopes and physics really ought not to jeopardize existing wealth, power and authority structures. Maintaining social stability is the paramount good because it is the clear good for everyone if those now in positions of power and priviledge remain there (while the other folks, poor and out of power, thank them for this happy stability).

thomas

Meant to mention earlier...exquisite piece from Ronald Dworkin here. Likely you've been reading some of the better coverage of Thomas and the hearings (Jan Greenberg in the Times and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate are two of my favorites) but this address by Dworkin is heads above anything else I've read. You'll like it.

I wonder if there will be a day on A2K that the Left doesn't build strawmen in lieu of actually discussing an issue.

1. Define the term.

2. Show the instance.

I read yesterday that climate change deniers were like the deniers of a link between lung cancer and smoking 40 years ago.

Lung cancer and cigarettes? Now, don't tell me fairy tales!

Yes, Walter, throw them cancer sticks away.

Na, there has some serious research to be done!
(And besides: my father was a lung specialist, smoked and died by a totally different illness.)

Yeah, George Burns smoked cigars till a ripe old age. If he didn't smoke, he wooda lived another hundred years. LOL

I had a good laugh at you for this one Fox, after reading this from you earlier..


I don't think you can find any time in history that scientific journals all agreed that the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it. "Scientific journals" didn't appear until long after Copernicus.

Look to your own straw before you accuse others.

That's nitpicking, parados. Didn't you ever hear about the chain letters which used to circle among abbey library monks?

The ones that still go around about how if you break the chain you will have 10 years of bad luck but if you don't an armored car will deliver $1 million to your doorstep. I often wondered why those letters came with a CD of chanting.