Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Dale Baker who wrote (23033)	7/6/2006 8:24:06 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541370

there is a chance that Gore's overheated rhetoric will have the same effect in the long run and make people wonder if they are being sold another bill of goods this time. You are good at finding the middle ground - even when it is between right and wrong. Is Gore's rhetoric more overheated than these comments that appeared in Tuesday's NY Times? Scientists used to think it might take decades before we had a clear signal of man-made global warming. Even then, they thought it would probably be hidden in esoteric data that few laymen could understand. Yet now all sorts of things seem to be happening right in front of our eyes — shrinking glaciers, thinning sea ice at the North Pole, huge chunks breaking off the Antarctic ice sheets, intense hurricanes, and scorching heat waves in Europe, to name a few. Are these signs that the adverse impacts of human-caused warming have arrived sooner than once expected?........... The leading scientific organizations with relevant expertise have overwhelmingly adopted the view that human-induced global warming is a serious problem. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has mobilized hundreds of scientists to analyze the evidence, has gotten progressively more concerned; it now holds humans responsible for most of the warming observed over the past 50 years. The science academies of the United States and 10 other industrial nations issued a joint statement last year citing "strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring" and calling for "prompt action" to combat it. The American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union have all chimed in with similar statements. Only the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry, has demurred. Meanwhile, the vast majority of research reports in leading scientific journals tend to support the prevailing view that human activities are mostly responsible for driving up temperatures. An analysis of 928 abstracts from leading scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 found that about 20 per cent explicitly endorsed that consensus, another 55 per cent implicitly accepted it and went on to evaluate impacts or propose mitigation strategies, and the remaining 25 per cent took no position. Not a single paper disagreed with the consensus. A rebuttal survey by a British social anthropologist found fewer papers that endorsed the consensus and 34 that rejected or doubted it, but that survey in turn was sharply criticized for distorting what the abstracts actually said......... Scary Scenarios Analyses of the gases trapped in ancient ice cores from Antarctica have revealed that important greenhouse gases have reached their highest atmospheric concentrations in at least 650,000 years. The concentrations will only get worse as cars, power plants and other burners of fossil fuels continue to pump carbon dioxide into the air and deforestation and other changes in land use slow the rate at which these gases are withdrawn from the atmosphere. Other things being equal, the rise in these gases will cause temperatures to rise. That's simple physics, agreed to by all sides.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (23033)	7/6/2006 8:42:41 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 541370

I don't have problems with visceral responses from skeptics- but I might say something when opinion is dressed up as fact...