Come on now; it happens to be that there is a large number in the scientific community that are part of your “denialist” group.B-I-L then points to this link, where a dissenting group of 650 scientists argue that there is little persuasive evidence for global climate change.
First, this is a link to a Republican blog, and the article is written as an attack on Al Gore, supporting the tie I have suggested between the Republican party and climate change denialism.
Second, I'd hardly call 650 scientists a "large number in the scientific community." There are literally millions of scientists on earth. Even if the petitioning scientists were actually all climatologists, they would only be a small fraction of the total number of climate scientists who have studied this phenomena in detail.
One of the lauded "scientists" who is directly quoted is Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever. Giaever has not authored a single paper on climate change or weather. He received his Nobel Prize in physics for doing research in the 60's on the electronic tunneling in superconducting materials. That makes him a bigshot at computer engineering conferences, but has literally nothing to do with the weather. Just because a person has achieved greatness in one area does not qualify them as a reliable expert in another. This is why even the finest actors should be completely ignored when they go hang out with Hugo Chavez and call themselves political geniuses.
Also quoted: a paleontologist, a geologist, a Japanese professor who believes recycling is a waste of energy, and many others who are highly accredited in their own field but have little knowledge in global atmospheric studies.
The partisan problem here is that if any study or report comes out supporting of global climate change, the Democrats go "SEE!!!!!!!!!!" and wave it in our faces, then the Republicans answer with their own opposing study or report and yell "SEE!!!!!!!!" and wave right back. And so a Democratically controlled Federal government will of course give NASA all the funding it needs to shoot a bunch of satellites into space that will help them with their next moment of yelling "SEE!!!" regardless of the fiscal irresponsibility of such an activity.
Personally, I do not know for sure if global warming is real or not. I tend to believe it is. But part of me thinks we're just still emerging from the last ice age. Humans have a short term memory, and climate change (even anthropogenic) happens slowly. When people say "wow it is cold this winter, so much for that global warming thing" I want to smack them because they just don't get that climate change doesn't happen over a weekend. And people don't realize that "global warming" can actually cause regional cooling (see my posts here and here).
The problem as I see it is not in the truth or falsehood of anthropogenic climate change. The problem is that human behavior is incapable of changing radically enough to create a zero impact situation. Even if we aren't yet at a population density/level of wastefulness required to destroy the Earth or and make it uninhabitable, we will be eventually, with the explosive population growth going on all over the globe. And everyone wants everyone else to be the one to change. No one has the courage to do the right thing. Short of a massive population decrease via pandemic or world war, I see us headed in the wrong direction with no brakes.
However, I do have one thought for the denialists. If you are right (which you very well may be), and the world has not yet felt the effects of humankind's prolific spread from pole to pole, wouldn't it behoove you to propse legislation now to aggressively curb the chance that in the future we will reach a point of environmental destruction that could in fact harm the earth? Doesn't it make sense to stop the future global warming before it starts? If the amount of pollution caused by the 7 billion people currently on Earth is not enough to cause climate change, doesn't it make sense to enact legislation that curbs the amount of crap dumped into the air to the current level, so we can forever stay in the equilibrium zone? We would not have to legislate the reduction of anything! We just need to legislate that there must not be any increase in carbon emissions from today forward.
Then the denialists could forever be right...as long as the world went on at that level, and the climate moved in its natural patterns, the denialists could smile and say "see, we were right, the temperature changes aren't human made." and then the environmentalists could smile back and say "and thanks to your brilliant legislation, they never will be."
_
4 comments:
Global warming is for sure an over hyped issue by hippy tree huggers who want to fear monger. Cap and trade: dumb. Carbon credits: dumb. We're wasting money trying to reduce our puny little pollution while while China and India do nothing...seems pointless to me.
The thing is that the whole point of the denialist movement is to protect the energy industry from internalizing the cost of carbon use. Take away the industry funding for denialism, and it would wither up and blow away overnight. So your compromise position, while admirable, negates the whole point of trying to convince people that climate change isn't happening.
Incidentally, this is not a strictly partisan issue. John McCain has (irregularly) been a voice of reason on climate legislation, whereas Democrats from Michigan and Louisiana, for obvious reasons, have tended to favor inadequate answers to the problem. And while movement conservatives seem to like the idea of more drilling just because it ticks off liberals, there are some commentators who point out that the environment is one of those things conservatives should be trying to conserve.
nice article.
There are just as many "experts" in this field you could have pointed to. I would site: William Happer and an article today in the National Post
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=1369439
William Happer is hardly a climate change "denier." A physics professor at Princeton, he is a former director of energy research for the U. S. Department of Energy, where he supervised work on climate change between 1990 and 1993. He is also one of the world's leading experts on "the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases," and on carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. Two weeks ago, he told the U. S. Congress, "I believe the increase of CO2 (in the atmosphere) is not a cause for alarm."
Read the link above for elaboration on his claims, pretty interesting.
So to answer your "thought for denialists" Yes, I agree that it does make sense to try to curb whatever we feel is causing harm to our earth but not at the expense of more taxes on the people as the government continues to steal more and more from you with no proof of the effect.
But your “thought for denialists” argument sounds a lot like the scare tactics used by religion to save your soul. That’s what is most scary to me is that this Man Made Global Warming idea has literally turned into a religious cause based on faith.
Post a Comment