On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, Alastair McDonald wrote: > You are right. There is no certainty of rapid climate change. All that > is certain is death and taxes. > > However, your belief seems to be that of the certainty of no rapid climate > change, which is equally untenable. That is not what you are charged with.
I doubt it will do any good, but I can explain again I suppose. I see no good evidence that the most widely touted "rapid" events - shutdown of THC; melt of greenland - are actually going to occur. They could; as could other unanticpated changes. You should certainly weight your outcomes to include unlikely-but-very-bad ones; but its difficult to do this when the probabilites are so hard to know. > You are charged with misuse of your authority as a qualified scientist to > advocate complacency, which will lead to widespread human misery and > perhaps the extinction of the human race. Ah, is that consistent with me being a member of the public? As a scientist, all I'm doing is reporting the science as I see it, to the best of my ability. > Even without rapid climate change, no action will lead to disaster. Here we disagree. In the absense of rapid change "no action *will* lead to disaster" is too strong. No action will lead to warming, certainly. To sea level rise, yes, probably 1/2m by 2100. But disaster? Harder to know. You claim certainty: this is wrong. > ...By criticising (and rubbishing) senior scientists such as James > Lovelock I certainly stand by my crit of Lovelock. > and David King (James Annan has even scoffed at the ten years > proposed by James Hansen) who are trying to warn the public of the dangers, > you are dealing a double blow to those who are trying to get positive action > taken. You are arguing for inertia and you are giving sustenance to the > skeptics who argue that the scientists are divided. > > And another thing, you always respond with inscrutable one-liners :-( Ah. -W. > Cheers, Alastair. > > > > > William M Connolley | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/ Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479 If I haven't seen further, it's because giants were standing on my shoulders -- This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
