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To: Lane3 who wrote (193618)	1/21/2007 6:20:37 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

In this case, we are not dumbing down and ridiculing an honest use of the terms, but ridiculing a wide-spread use that has been dumbed down already and preached as gospel, not science. As currently preached, not only is global warming unverifiable and uncontradictable by evidence, but it is routinely supported by outright lies, such as the claim that "the Antartic is melting" and the "seas could rise 20 feet" - as Al Gore routinely claims. Statistical clustering is a valid demographic technique too. It does mean that I have to credit the studies that come out in the Lancet in October of election years claiming wild numbers of casualties in Iraq, or that those studies aren't worthy of ridicule too.

To: Lane3 who wrote (193618)	1/26/2007 3:02:28 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

The problem with the tipping point idea applied to this particular controversy, is that its used a device to shut down any argument about the need for more data. "We can't wait for more evidence that there will be a huge amount of global warming or that it will have disastrous consequences, because by then we will have already passed the tipping point and it will be too late". Really that problem isn't limited to global warming. Global warming is just perhaps the clearest and more frequent example of it. Tipping points are very frequently, probably most of the time very unsure things (esp. inter terms of where the tipping point is, but even in terms of "is there some irreversible tipping point?", even when the underlying problem and the reasons for having a tipping point are well understood.