(01-25-2010 12:25 PM)SumOfAllFears Wrote: (01-25-2010 12:08 PM)NIU007 Wrote: (01-24-2010 06:21 PM)jh Wrote: (01-23-2010 09:59 AM)SumOfAllFears Wrote: Gray, who has previously called claims of manmade global warming “the greatest scientific hoax of all time,” added: “Humans are probably doing something [to affect climate] and the CO2 may be warming [the globe] a bit but it’s not doing near what the alarmists have been telling us — that the Greenland ice cap is going to melt, the sea ice near the North Pole will not be there in another 20, 30 years. All these wild claims, there’s no basis for. The ice cap is not going to melt in the next 20, 30 years.”
This, I believe, is the general scientific consensus. Global warming is real, part of it is man made, but it's not a crisis of epic proportions.
I was going to highlight the same thing. However, if you admit that we are affecting the climate to a measurable extent, I would consider it still an issue that needs to be addressed, even if it isn't going to be catastrophic as quickly as some are saying.
The question is are you willing to spend trillions of dollars that will only affect temperature in a negligible way? When that money could be used to help humanity?
No one is saying we should not try to clean up our environmental pollution of the planet.
Absolutely 100%. And THIS is the crux of the argument... If you can't tell me how big the problem is, how can you tell me that it is worth millions or billions or trillions to "solve"? You (the scientific community) can't even tell me that it CAN be solved. If the solution is to cut global population by 50%, then it isn't going to happen, unless we find a new globe.
(01-25-2010 12:52 PM)bubbapt Wrote: For some reason, meteorologists tend to be somewhat skeptical of the conclusions being made by climate scientists. A recent survey of meteorologists found that only 25% agree with the conclusions reached by the IPCC in its latest report.
The response from climate scientists to this skepticism has been interesting; basically, their response is that meteorologists are not educated in the scientific areas necessary to understand climate change.
Apparently, not only does weather NOT equate with climate, they say, but they aren't even closely related...
Scientific nuances... Meteorology deals with what is... science with what could be. Practice versus theory. Meteorologists don't project years forward, much less decades or eons... but they are very good at predicting days or weeks forward and they're good at predicting short term weather patterns and interpreting past data.
Stock pickers are the same way. You don't get printed (or paid) by saying that stocks are going to increase by 5%/year for the next 10 years... you get paid and printed by saying we're going up or down by 50% over some fairly short period. People pay for panic, and that is what these people are doing. Newspapers and TV are the same way. Tiger had an affair, on page 3... Tiger fathered a baby with an alien, page 1... if it bleeds, it leads.
Bottom line.. there's no way man doesn't influence the environment... in good and bad ways... mostly bad... I mean, we kill millions of ants and roaches and rodents... Nature intended for them to be here... some consequences are unintended... like having to re-introduce wolves to Yosemite... but roaches and wolves ALSO impact the environment, and they don't do a darn thing to make up for the cost of their actions. It's what happens in nature... and nature has managed.
Americans pay the Chinese and others for their products. If they price it cheap because they ruin the environment producing it, we don't owe them to clean it up... they can charge more for their product and clean it up themselves. That's what WE did. Let THEIR economy bear the burden as they got the jobs benefit while we lost them.
Relatively speaking, we are a very clean country... but we also consume a lot. We've spent trillions since the 70's fixing the ills from the previous 100 years of mistakes. We should continue to stay as clean as possible, but it is not our responsibility to pay "reparations" to other countries or clean them up. Kyoto and the UN fiasco are an insult and a joke.