An interesting article was posted in the Drudge Report this afternoon, from Senator James Inhofe's "The Inhofe EPW BLOG", to the effect that there are over 400 prominent scientists who have publically voiced skepticism about global warming theories and predictions. This is against the background of the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) blithely declaring that there are only about half a dozen skeptical scientists left in the world and former Vice President Al Gore claiming that scientists skeptical of climate change are akin to "flat Earth society members." I hope you can use this link. It worked for me when I tested in after first submitting this post. The scientists, their academic degrees, and their academic affiliations are identified in the report linked to this BLOG. They say others of their colleagues share their skepticism, but refuse to take a public stand from fear of professional persecution. I don't know if you all recall, but some time back a female weather woman in the US said that any weather professional who made statements that disparaged or moderated the threat posed by Global Warming should have their professional weather credentials stripped. I guess this would be an example of how a scientist might be subjected to professional persecution. Other ways could be not granting tenure to a professor; as you all probably know, obtaining tenure as a professor at a University is highly important to academics and also highly subjective.
The article on this BLOG says that some reporter at the Washington Post "conceded the obvious, that climate skeptics appear to be expanding rather than shrinking."
Good read, I'm sure there are still going to be people saying that this blog is made up and no one can prove that GW is a hoax... Typical of ol' algore flinging mud at those who oppose him, since he is all powerful. HAHA.."Flat Earth society"...Get a clue.
It's important to remember that the question is not is there or is there not climate change, but are we puny little humans causing it. Faced with the evidence for huge changes in climate in the past, it's obvious the people who are claiming that we are responsible are full of hot air.
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Proud parents of our own "Daddy's Little Girls"
I heard Jesus He drank wine and I bet we'd get along just fine.
The bottom line is that most people, particularly Americans, have a rather short attention span. Environmentalists and assorted lefties have been beating the global warming drum non-stop for several years now. Now that people are realizing that the sky isn't falling, and won't for several generations, they've gone back to more worthy matters, like work, family, football, etc.
It's important to remember that the question is not is there or is there not climate change, but are we puny little humans causing it. Faced with the evidence for huge changes in climate in the past, it's obvious the people who are claiming that we are responsible are full of hot air.
Yes, very much to the point. I usually take the trouble to spell this distinction out, I just got lazy. People are so funny, they make such predictable errors of thinking. One of those errors is assuming that the climate has ALWAYS been constant and only now is it changing. Au contraire, the climate has changed a lot in the past -- presumably independently of any human perturbations of the global climate machinery -- and has changed within recorded human history. By the way, as far as people making predictable errors, I too count myself as vulnerable to this phenomenon and try to be on the look-out for these errors. Another key error to be on the look-out for is seeing what you want to see, or selecting what you want to see from the larger set of things you actually see (or hear or whatever).
I saw an interesting documentary on the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia. It was said that a great eruption in about 500 AD would have impacted global climate for several years and would have lowered average temperatures about 10 degrees. These temperature changes were so significant dramatic famines would have occured and were in fact described in historical annals. They mentioned a large increase in sickness world wide that corresponded with the famines and calculated that more individuals died from the follow-on problems than from the original volcanic eruption and associated big tsunamis.
My main problem with the Global Warming zealots (meaning, those who [1] claim that human beings contribute materially to global warming and [2] who claim that the global warming is destined to have major impacts) is that they aren't doing good science -- they are carefully selecting and marshalling arguments only as they support their position and not distinguishing hypothesis from observed data and not subjecting their work to dispassionate, neutral peer review (in fact, most of them are not scientists by training at all, witness Al Bore, and these procedures and protocols are totally unknown to them) and they lack the necessary appreciation for the immaturity and the incompleteness of our knowledge of climate mechanisms. This aggressive insistence that a concensus has been achieved, this aggressive drumbeat of culpability of the affluent societies for consuming more resources than the impoverished societies, this just smells of something that is not science but rather a political agenda. I take as further evidence for this that one of the principle cries raised by the global warming zealots is the cry for new taxes on carbon emissions. How clever -- fill us with fear and guilt and then tax us for the things we are doing that are evil. It is almost like a penance given to us by the priest in the confessional -- say three Our Fathers, one Hail Mary, and pay this tax for the CO2 emitted by your Suburban.
It's important to remember that the question is not is there or is there not climate change, but are we puny little humans causing it.Â* Faced with the evidence for huge changes in climate in the past, it's obvious the people who are claiming that we are responsible are full of hot air.
There's no way we caused it. We may have accelerated it, but there's no way to know. Some things I do know are: Al Gore doesn't believe it, or at least he doesn't live like it. No one pushing GW is talking about how we are to live with drastic climate change if it happens. All you hear is "Save the Planet", but no contingency plan.
Here's about 750 million years of climate history for you. We've swung back and forth between Ice House and Hot House climates as long as earth has had weather.
Global Warming Skeptics grow numbers
