From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 5:48 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: real A.I.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 , 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
> Climate skepticism is more of a political phenomenon
That depends on what you mean by climate skepticism. I'm nor skeptical that the
world is warmer now than it was a century ago. And I'm not skeptical that human
activity is responsible for at least part of that warming. But I am skeptical
that climate warming is necessarily a bad thing. And if it is a bad thing I'm
very skeptical that the cure proposed by environmentalists isn't worse, far FAR
worse, than the disease.
John – you are in a minority I believe. Most skeptics (as they many skeptics of
the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis seem to like to term themselves… at
least in the USA) question both that any global warming is occurring; and
secondly that if it is occurring it is driven by natural climate variation –
for example cyclic variations in the earth’s orbit and tilt (which have been
falsified as being potential drivers of the recent temperature anomaly).
You seem to accept both that the earth is warming at a geologically (and on
ecological time scales as well) extremely rapid rate AND that human generated
emissions of CO2, CH4 as well as other more exotic greenhouse gases are at
least partially responsible (if AGW contributes just a small fraction of global
warming then what other climate drivers do you propose as providing the rest of
the driving force for climate change? If AGW contributes by far most of the
driving force for recent climate change then why phrase your position in this
manner “human activity is responsible for at least part of that warming.”)
In this basic acceptance you differ from most climate skeptics who doubt even
the basic datasets… who quote “facts” that they found on some denier website
that got them from some other denier institute that got them from some denier
blog… and round we go to factually nowhere.
As for your sanguine attitude that global warming (along with the inevitable
attendant sea rise and flooding of the most densely populated and
agriculturally productive regions of the planet) is not so bad… you are
entitled to your opinions, as I am entitled to the opinion that we should be
very, very careful before experimenting with the basic equilibrium states of
our planetary biosphere.
We only have one single planet to experiment with; a certain cautionary
principle should apply before we induce potentially irreversible changes in our
planets climatic systems… even if some amongst us feel like it might not be a
bad thing.
-Chris
John K Clark
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