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

Slightly off-topic but made me think there are such tremendous forces at work in our planet that this "global warming" discussion seems rather pointless -- sure the planet warms up and cools down every few millenia no matter whether we're around or not, so what do you all say we should DO about it???

The last two posts incorporate something not so common anymore. Its something called COMMON SENSE. Thanks!

Careful Louise. Galileo got in serious trouble for this sort of thinking a few centuries ago. This is one of the central tenants of political correctitude, and the credulous crowd does not take heresy lightly...

The point here may be that amidst all the constant change to which our old earth has been subject, and which continues without respect to our puny existence, the conceit that ,the flatulence of our bodies and factories could somehow upset the whole thing, is, itself quite remarkable.

Actually, the motion of crustal plates with subsequent consequences like tsunamis does pose an interesting question...what is the character of a God who would rip a six month old baby from its mother's arms and impale it through the head on a rusting iron gate? Along with the 200,000 others, of course. Or for another nifty natural phenomenon demonstrating His grace, those parasites which burrow up into an animal's brain, then deposit an egg which becomes a larvae that slowly feeds on the brain of the host animal.

And the thing of it all is that such wonders (along with, say, the odd comet plowing into the planet) provide one darned good argument for dismissing the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming (including the findings of President Bush's own science panel). Earthquakes rumble and kill Californians, lightening zaps kids playing soccer in Ohio, so therefore there is no reason to engineer buildings to withstand quakes and no reason to educate children to seek proper shelter in a lightening storm.

I don't think, anyone ever suggested that the 'problems' with the various earth plates are men-made.

blatham wrote:

Actually, the motion of crustal plates with subsequent consequences like tsunamis does pose an interesting question...what is the character of a God who would rip a six month old baby from its mother's arms and impale it through the head on a rusting iron gate? Along with the 200,000 others, of course. Or for another nifty natural phenomenon demonstrating His grace, those parasites which burrow up into an animal's brain, then deposit an egg which becomes a larvae that slowly feeds on the brain of the host animal.

Love that old Kafka-esque stuff! "Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to discover that he had been transformed into a beetle". It, and a wistful look were sometimes useful for getting into the pants of St Johns College girls in the old days. Not much else as I later discovered.

You'll have to admit Bernie that the point is a bit sophomoric. If there is no God, there is no question. If He exists, there may be much more to the question than you allow. Even Aristotle understood this.

Quote:

And the thing of it all is that such wonders (along with, say, the odd comet plowing into the planet) provide one darned good argument for dismissing the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming (including the findings of President Bush's own science panel). Earthquakes rumble and kill Californians, lightening zaps kids playing soccer in Ohio, so therefore there is no reason to engineer buildings to withstand quakes and no reason to educate children to seek proper shelter in a lightening storm.

You (deliberately, I think) miss the point. I was referring to the ever-present suggestion of runaway, chaotic global warming due solely to manmade greenhouse gas emissions: a catastrophie so severe that any cost is acceptable in preventing it, including the imposition of energy use restrictions sufficient to significantly set back the quality of life and depopulate much of the earth. Even California seismic engineers accept a finite probability of structural failure in a major earthquake.

I don't think, anyone ever suggested that the 'problems' with the various earth plates are men-made.

Here is my mediaeval namesake, Matthew Paris, writing in 1247: In this same year, on the Ides of February, that is on the eve of St Valentine's day, an earthquake was felt at various places in England, especially at London and above all on the banks of the River Thames. It shook many buildings and was extremely damaging and terrible. It was thought to be significant because earthquakes are unusual and unnatural in these western countries since the solid mass of England lacks those underground caverns and deep cavities in which, according to philosophers, they are usually generated, nor could any reason for it be discovered. It was therefore expected that the end of the ageing world was at hand according to the threats of the gospel....

Matthew was not the first scientist, and has not proved the last, to exploit the human animal's inborn fear of an ungovernable universe. Nor was he first or last to play upon the suspicion that gnaws at the innards of every age: that we are not living as we ought. Find a way of linking these two secret disquiets and you have an unshakable grip on the popular imagination.

Here's how: place at the apex of your order of creation a fiction. If you are born in the Middle Ages, call it God. If you live now, call it the Ecological Balance. Identify a perturbation in nature, then interpret it as a warning that we are living wrongly and should change our ways. Finally, earn yourself status, a pulpit, a Commons cheer, a living, or a research grant by elaborating on the perturbation and enumerating the ways we should change.

Thanks for the clarification above. It seemed you'd fallen back a few steps and I felt it necessary to get you to behave.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

What gives YOU the right to pontificate on SOMETHING, ANYTHING AT ALL, THAT'S JUST PLAIN NOT PROVEN????Climatologists themselves differ and I'm only trained in biology so I simply know to LOOK FOR SCIENTIFIC PROOF a.k.a. A REPEATABLE EXPERIMENT. If YOU, sir, are ANY KIND OF SCIENTIST I wish to know in which discipline trained, where exactly, and grounds for your dogmatic opinions. Thank you very much in advance

I apologize for the capital letters but I wish those who know not how to prove anything in the sciences would kindly consider that results have to be duplicated, giving the same outcome in each case.

Ms. Heller:

Being a biologist doesn't make you an expert in meteorology. Just an observation.

If YOU, sir, are ANY KIND OF SCIENTIST I wish to know in which discipline trained, where exactly, and grounds for your dogmatic opinions. Thank you very much in advance

Louise_R_Heller wrote:

If YOU, sir, are ANY KIND OF SCIENTIST I wish to know in which discipline trained, where exactly, and grounds for your dogmatic opinions. Thank you very much in advance

The last time I was asked such, I got my certificate to teach at universities.

What exactly are your offers?