Bernie is right. Our grandchildren and their children are going to want to know how we could ignore the warnings of 95% of scientists and 97% of climatologists, and leave them a world much worse than the one we inherited. What are we going to tell them? We didn't want a Black president to get credit? We didn't want giant corporations making record profits to have to clean up their pollution? We were trying to please an ignorant anti-science base of religious voters? I don't think they'll accept those feeble excuses -- and we shouldn't either.
I just finished reading "TIMESCAPE" by Gregory Benford. It was written in 1980. This subject was addressed in his novel in an interesting sci fi way. Worth a read.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you find these people? The Asians - led by China - are not going to do what the US of A tells them to do! And anyway, why should they? CO2 emissions have rocketed upwards mainly due to Asian/Chinese production of items that you Americans can't buy quick enough because they're so stinking cheap, and yet global temperatures have remained static for over 15 years. You may be daft enough to believe Al Gore and Michael Mann but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to, particularly when they are proven to be absolutely wrong!
ReplyDeleteThe people I'm "daft" enough to believe are 95% of the world's scientists, and 97% of the world's climate scientists.
Delete"...China, the largest greenhouse-gas producer, unveiled its most far-reaching attempt so far to control toxic air pollution; it also started a pilot carbon-trading scheme in the southern city of Shenzhen...Beijing suffered an “airpocalypse” in January, with smog 40 times above safe levels: too high at any price..." - The Economist It's not just the heat, it's the pollution too.
ReplyDeleteThe people I'm 'daft' enough to believe are 95% of the world's scientists, and 97% of the world's climate scientists.
ReplyDeleteTed, what you're failing to understand is that science is based on evidence, not on consensus. If it were based on consensus, the Earth would have been the center of the universe for 15 centuries.
From the Wikipedia article on Nicolaus Copernicus:
"The prevailing theory in Europe during Copernicus' lifetime was the one that Ptolemy published in his Almagest circa 150 CE; the Earth was the stationary center of the universe. Stars were embedded in a large outer sphere which rotated rapidly, approximately daily, while each of the planets, the Sun, and the Moon were embedded in their own, smaller spheres. Ptolemy's system employed devices, including epicycles, deferents and equants, to account for observations that the paths of these bodies differed from simple, circular orbits centered on the Earth."
Just like the scientific community of Copernicus' era, today's "95% of the world's scientists, and 97% of the world's climate scientists" are concocting their own "epicycles, deferents and equants" - volcanic ash, more heat being absorbed by oceans, etc. - in an attempt to squeeze reality into their own "prevailing theory," even though the evidence shows that global warming has been decelerating over the last 15 or so years, while the human activity that has been allegedly causing it has been accelerating during that same period. Check out this article from the U.K. Mail:
Why HAS global warming slowed?
You're comparing apples to oranges -- a consensus based on religion with a consensus based on science.
DeleteAgain, from Wikipedia - this time Claudius Ptolemy:
ReplyDelete"Claudius Ptolemy (/ˈtɒləmi/; Greek: Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος, Klaudios Ptolemaios, pronounced [kláwdios ptolɛmɛ́ːos]; Latin: Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. AD 90 – c. AD 168) was a Greco-Roman writer of Alexandria, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt, wrote in Greek, and held Roman citizenship. Beyond that, few reliable details of his life are known. His birthplace has been given as Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid in an uncorroborated statement by the 14th century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes. This is very late, however, and there is no other reason to suppose that he ever lived anywhere else than Alexandria, where he died around AD 168." [Emphasis added]
Mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, part-time poet ... No mention of his religious persuasion. For all we know, he might have been an atheist. :)
If you're implying that religious leaders forced the scientific community into consensus regarding Ptolemy's theory of the universe because it fit conveniently into their world view, you'd be correct. But if you don't believe that scientists face similar pressures today to conform to "the prevailing theory" of global warming despite mounting evidence to the contrary, ask Nicholas Drapela.
Or William Gray, to name just two.
One lost his job, the other his funding, not because they were dishonest, but because they dared to question a theory upon which so many other scientists staked their reputations and careers.
In Copernicus' time, he was the lone voice crying in the wilderness - a 16th Century "geocentric denier," if you will. He also happened to be right, despite the "consensus" of his colleagues.
But forget about antiquity - What about the "consensus" of less than 40 years ago? What ever happened to The Cooling World? Was this a "consensus based on religion"?
I don't know what Ptolemy has to do with this discussion -- since he lived centuries before Copernicus, and the church had since exerted its influence over all aspects of life in Europe.
DeleteAnd there's a big BIG difference between religion controlling science thinking, and scientists reaching a consensus based on experimentations and fact.
Sigh! Here we go again:
ReplyDeleteFrom the Wikipedia article on Nicolaus Copernicus:
"The prevailing theory in Europe during Copernicus' lifetime was the one that Ptolemy published in his Almagest circa 150 CE; the Earth was the stationary center of the universe."
In other words, Ptolemy (who I've shown wasn't a religious person) came up with the geocentric theory in the First Century, not based on religious conviction, but on his (albeit erroneous) scientific conclusions. The Church perpetuated this flawed theory because it supported the Church's theology, as well as its political power.
But you still haven't answered my question: Just forty years ago, the scientific community was claiming that global cooling was occuring, predicting equally disasterous results as the global warmists are now predicting for global warming (read the 1975 Newsweek article I linked to again if you think I'm making this up).
Two diametrically opposed predictions (global cooling v. global warming), all during a four-decade period of ever increasing levels of greenhouse gases. But the common demoninator of both predictions is dire alarmism, something that is needed to raise research funds, or sell movies and lectures of future catastrophic events (just ask Al Gore).
So my question is this: Since global cooling and global warming are mutually exclusive, which theory is "religion controlling science thinking" and which is "scientists reaching a consensus based on experimentations and fact." Whose experimentations? Whose "facts"? Or is there something else going on here? Something that has more to do with money and power than science.
1. You still have science against religious dogma (with Copernicus representing science).
ReplyDelete2. It's silly to say that since science was wrong at some time in the past, they must be wrong now.
3. The two might not be so incompatible anyway. There are scientists who believe that the arctic melting will slow down or stop the Atlantic current (which flows down to the Caribbean and brings warm water north, keeping North America warm), and if this happens it could kick off a new ice age.
Let me put it another way, and then I'll give you the last word.
ReplyDeleteAccording to recent scientific explanations, greenhouse gases cause global warming, but they also cause global cooling. They cause fewer snowstorms, but they also cause more snowstorms. They cause more hurricanes, but they also cause fewer hurricanes. They cause droughts, but they also cause floods.
Jerome Eckstein, my sister-in-law's philosophy professor at the State University of New York at Albany in the 1960's, once told her class that any answer that attempts to answer all questions actually answers no questions.
Answering "greenhouse gases" to explain any and every climatological phenomenon (even totally opposite ones) is the secular equivalent of "It's God's will." It explains nothing.
Well those greenhouse gases are killing off coral reefs, that's for sure.
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