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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (17210)	4/27/2006 8:55:34 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541355

Global warming and the greenhouse effect are not "unknown" No, they aren't. And I agree that anyone who says they don't exist is off base, although not off base in the way a Holocaust denier is off base. Perhaps more an ostrich. Or someone with a selfish agenda. Or stupid, as you suggest. confused a precise prediction about when during this century the shiite will hit the fan I don't think it's as clear as you suggest, that all that's missing is this precise timing. We haven't yet defined what's hitting what fan. Nor have we defined what realistically can and should be done about it. What we have is a war between deniers and hysterics. The hysterics get more hysterical due to the confrontations with the stubborn deniers. I recall the word "catastrophe" used several times during that show. One was in the context of drought someplace in Africa due to the changes in weather patters. There are catastrophes and then there catastrophes. I'm in Tucson at the moment where apparently once there was a rain forest. Apparently at some point the weather patterns changed. Was that a catastrophe? It would be helpful if some folks quit denying and other folks quit calling the loss of beach in South Carolina a catastrophe, either that or give enough room on the stage for the rest of us to talk about what's real, what's preventable, what adaptations are practicable, and what to let go.

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (17210)	4/27/2006 6:54:59 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541355

The greenhouse effect is well known and the evidence that there has been some degree of global warming is fairly solid. But how much global warming there will be in the future (with no changes or with any change you want to plug in to the equation); how much of this will be do to the action of people, and specificially from CO2 emissions; what problems the warming will cause; how severe the problems will be; what offsetting benefits might happen and how much of a factor they will be; how much the emission of CO2 can be reduced and how much harm will be done by the effort to reduce CO2 emissions; how much global warming can be mitigated by reducing non-CO2 emissions such as emissions of methane or by other counter measures from planting trees to seeding the ocean with iron to encourage plankton growth, to making more man made structures with highly reflective tops, to scattering particles in the upper atmosphere or even building large "sun-shade" in orbit; are all very unknown. The Holocaust is something that can be established as having happened without a shadow of a doubt other than the type of doubt involved in the philosophical question of how we know anything. Certainly it goes well beyond the "beyond all reasonable doubt" level of certainty. Global warming in recent history caused by CO2 emitted by human activity is fairly solidly established, but you could argue it doesn't quite reach "beyond all reasonable doubt", and even if it does reach that level it falls short of the level of certainty of the Holocaust. Denial of it is less unreasonable as a matter of fact and logic, and is far less likely to be motivated by hate and prejudice. So even for this level of global warming denial it is not very reasonable to compare the deniers with those who deny the Holocaust. Denying the idea that it is solidly determined, that absent an enormous effort to reduce CO2 emissions, a large degree of global warming will occur and that this warming will be a major disaster for humanity, is not unreasonable at all. Being skeptical about such a claim, not only is very different than being skeptical about the Holocaust, it is actually the most logical position to take.