Maybe, maybe not.
Incidentally, this brother thinks that I am a climate change denier and that therefore I am morally corrupt.
My problem with the (non) debate so far has been over two items. The first is that no one has had the vision to lay out what the future will be like, except to say it will be bad. Bad like today, or bad like the partition of India or bad like 1946 or bad like 1918 or bad like 1350? With all those models I would think that someone could put something up on the internet to help us get a sense of it. Somewhere in the house I have a 1950s book and a simple circular slide rule to tell the effects of nuclear weapons. Are we not at least that far along WRT climate change?
Second, I am nervous whenever there are dogmatic assertions of truth. And maybe I am not alone.
Judith Curry, head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and one of the few scientists convinced of the potential for catastrophic global warming who is willing to engage skeptics seriously, wrote February 24: “No one really believes that the ‘science is settled’ or that ‘the debate is over.’ Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda. There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements.”Let me help out all those who think that a skeptic is the same as a denier.
I am open to the whole thing. I am not convinced by former VP Al Gore.♠ . I want some serious scientists and engineers to give me the puts and takes and to not just sum it up with a political agenda for taxing carbon. I am better educated than that. I don't want my science predigested for me.
Regards — Cliff
♠ Don't stare at the cartoon of former VP Al Gore.
4 comments:
First and foremost, I don't think there is much debate over the fact that the climate is changing. It is. The landscape of the Arctic Ocean and Greenland (which is threatening to become green once again) is indicative of change. The questions that have not and are not being answered are "Change to what?" and "Change for how long?" Are we on the way to a tropical, steaming hell on earth? Should we all grow gills and permanent swim fins (I have the whale role cornered)? Or is this some cyclical thing? Nobody....NOBODY...even Algore knows the answer. Part of the problem is that the historical data doesn't exist and most of what we have to examine for, oh, say, the past 1000 years is largely anecdotal and reported through the lense of someone not particularly "scientific." Given the absence of global transport capability, it is fair to assume....okay...PRESUME....that any atmospheric variations or sudden excusions from the norm were largely local and based on personal experience. The wisdom of the day for the metaphorical story of Job was that he had somehow pissed off God and was being summarily punished.
The other MAJOR problem with the whole climate change gig is that in almost every case presented to the "public," there is a financial goal as an end-state. In other words, like Algore (who is heavily invested in "green" technology and has made well over $500 M since he gave up on inventing the internet and discovered global climate change), everyone is on board to get a reward of some type. Not one scientist has put the research out there "just for knowlege sake." They want a Nobel, academic tenure, a power position with the UN, to make the UN a global government, and a thousand other arcane personal objectives. But NOBODY has been in it for TRUTH alone.
Again, and the most germane question is this; "Climate change to what and for how long?"
I don't think that the 'climate change gig' is a particularly lucrative one for scientists. I'm sure they could get some corporate gigs that pay a helluva lot more.
If you think the majority of scientists aren't after truth, then I just don't know what to say...that's some serious distrust of mankind.
I've heard several theories of likely scenarios. Most of them seem pretty bad for at least a portion of the globe.
As for the 'science is settled' or there 'is no debate', I think that means different things to scientists than to non-scientists. The debate isn't about whether it is happening or is man-made - that much is settled. The debate is what are the effects, what is the time-frame and what is the severity.
Actually, the debate includes the degree to which climate change is influenced by man. Many in the community are taking the objective high road and pointing to natural rhythms that impact climate, both short wave and long wave rhythms. At the moment, the science is far from settled. Moreover, much of the data and analysis has been sloppy and presumptive.
Within "the community" there is much less acrimony than that in the social and political venue. One of the things scientists strive for is to be published, and in order to do so, one has to select an appropriate venue for submission. The IPCC has been a magnet for scientists wanting to establish themselves as "expert" and as "participants" in the discussions. The problem is, that each publishing organization has its own agenda, and if one doesn't meet certain criteria that are derived from the agenda, the paper will not be published by that organization. BTW, the IPCC is NOT a scientific body. It is a political body assembled by a larger political body with goals quite apart from those found in research academia.
So, while science may have some solid theories about the why of climate variation, the impact of each component of the why have not been clearly established. Once done, then science and technology can move on to what to do about the why.
America has a long history of discovering a potential disaster of catestrophic proportions, ie, the worst case scenario, and then throwing every available resource at that potential, wasting not only time, but valuable resources.
My concern with this sky is falling mania is that it has become much less about fixing any problems that we may be able to fix, and/or deciding how to mitigate the effects of those problems that we can't fix, ie, natural cycles. It has become instead an entreprenurial Disneyworld that threatens to massively redistribute income to Wall Street and the pockets of a few.
I never said you were morally corrupt, but that in your dogmatic reaction to this issue you might not be honoring God's call to you and to all of us for stewardship.
I think that sometimes "they" feel that Americans are most effective when they are responding to a crisis and things are portrayed as more immediate crises so that we will act the way we should.
Climate change is not lucrative or even sexy. So we must be drawn to what we are called to do for future generations.
Now if someone could make the national debt crisis lucrative or sexy.
Post a Comment