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Global warming pisses me off because it isn't so much science as it is religion. Whether it gets hotter, colder, drier, wetter or whatever some will take that
by cletus 16y ago
Global warming pisses me off because it isn't so much science as it is religion.
Whether it gets hotter, colder, drier, wetter or whatever some will take that to be "proof" of global warming just as others will claim the opposite.
The really offensive thing to me is the science part. Papers that don't provide facts or, in some cases, sources for their facts, publications that give such shoddy work a free pass because it happens to agree with their editorial stance. Organizations that go out of their say to smear and silence skeptics. The list goes on.
Whatever the case climate models have a pretty poor track record when it comes to making predictions.
Last month I saw something about climate on Discovery. It was talking about "Snowball Earth", the period nearly 600 million years ago when ice extended to the equator. The show claimed that we could trigger such an event. What's more, snow and ice reflect sunlight that could cause a (excuse the pun) snowball effect: as the ice grows it gets colder.
What many seem to forget are two things:
1. What they're describing is called a divergent system. We don't live in such a system because, if we did, the earth would've either frozen solid or boiled away in the last 4 billion years and we wouldn't be here; and
2. The earth is an incredibly complex system with many interplaying variables such that making predictions and identifying cause and effect is incredibly hard.
They way I see it, the pro-AGW crowd need to:
1. Prove the earth is warming. This is far from fact. For one, it depends on your point of reference. Compared to 1890 it's warmer and for this reason the link to the Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels likes to be drawn but what about 500 years ago? 5000? 5 million? The earth has been an awful lot hotter than it is now.
2. that warming is man-made;
3. That warming is bad. It'd be bad for some but I guarantee you it'd be good for others.
4. Human intervention can alter the result;
5. That cost isn't prohibitive.
as far as I'm concerned we haven't even settled (1) yet.
In the meantime those that raise such questions are demonized. Those that benefit from offending industries aren't the least bit interested in the truth either. Instead of science we have politics and religion.
But I for one am sick of hearing that whatever happens is somehow proof of global warming.
- nika 16y agoYou reference the snowball earth, and I'd like to point out (or emphasize) the opposite applies as well. Many times in the past (as I understand it) CO2 levels have been dramatically higher than they are today. If a runaway greenhouse effect was likely triggered by these tiny increases in CO2 (as proportion of atmosphere) claimed by proponents of AGW, wouldn't it have been triggered in the past, when CO2 levels were vastly higher? Two opposite situations that one could plausibly argue would result in a runaway effect to an extreme equilibrium where humans couldn't survive. They both sound plausible, but despite having experienced both ice ages and dramatically higher CO2 (and temperatures) in the past, the predictions have not happened.
- jamesrcole 16y ago> Global warming pisses me off because it isn't so much > science as it is religion. I agree that there's a lot of problems with the way people talk and argue about it, but I think it needs to be clearer that this is a separate issue from whether human-made global warming is happening or not, and if it is, how severe a problem it is. People could be arguing for it in very dodgy ways, and it could still be true. > They way I see it, the pro-AGW crowd need to: [...] > 3. That warming is bad. It'd be bad for some but I > guarantee you it'd be good for others. You're implying that any good effects balance out any bad ones, but of course they're unlikely to be equal in magnitude. Maybe the bad effects will be far greater than the good effects, or maybe the good effects will be greater than the bad ones - either way, it's the overall consequences that matter. Also, I don't think the requirement should be for people to prove these things, in the sense of some absolute proof, whereby if we can't prove it definitely is happening we should act as if it is definitely not happening. In reality we always have to act in terms of our degrees of confidence about what is probably going on.
- ugh 16y agoYou should really read scientific papers and not get your information about climate change from TV shows …
- nika 16y agoI find it amazing that global warming proponents who, frankly, never seem to know anything about the actual science are so snide whenever they encounter someone who does know the science and who points out holes. If science really were on your side, you could make scientific claims, instead you just attack him. This is proof that you reject science, and that you are defending a religious belief.