Craig: I also have a PhD, I'm not an ignorant yahoo from under a rock.
Over the four decades I've been paying attention to this subject, I've had the opportunity to work with people directly involved in the discussion at several universities and Forestry Canada, where I did a Post-Doc. I have not heard serious debate about either the fact nor the consequences of global warming for a very long time from climatologists or ecologists. I have heard considerable discussion of magnitude of effects and timing and self-correcting mechanisms, but amongst the academics outside the fossil fuel industry, global climate change to a much warmer planet and wilder weather is a done deal, and has been for a couple decades. The only "debate" comes from outside academic research facilities, primarily from organizations funded by the fossil fuel industry.
Climate change is indeed cyclical, but there is a significant difference between this warming cycle and the last one, specifically that the CO2 content of the atmosphere is very much higher than it has been as far back as the ice data from Greenland and Antarctica goes. I have heard some speculation that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has not been this high since the last massive species die-off, although I suspect that would be somewhat hard to clearly demonstrate.
The last time we had very warm and dry conditions in the US, the tall grass grasslands (think Kansas) extended into eastern Ohio. Most of what is now short grass grasslands was desert, and the desert areas in the southwest were as dry as the Sahara. What would it be like with even more heat?
Beware material produced by people with a PAID agenda. University scientists are, by and large, independent. People who work for foundations funded by sources wishing to perpetuate a highly profitable business are highly suspect. A PhD does not make one immune to corruption, as the sludge produced by any number of "think tanks" demonstrates quite nicely.
I don't know if you are old enough to have grown up in the 60's, or missed that decade of insanity, but I personally learned to sift through the propaganda generated by organizations dedicated to enriching themselves at other people's expense and to verify data and conclusions from a rational rather than emotional viewpoint. Saves endless trouble. In this day and age when everything is reversed you make me laugh when you accuse university scientist of "faking data to get grants" by quoting people being paid by the Koch brothers to muddy the water. Mirrors everywhere, and more than enough smoke being blown.
Even published scientific papers have to be evaluated carefully, particularly when they are not based on precise data (and no climate data is precise, climate is a chaotic system). One must always consider the source, the source of funding, and the known or possible agenda of anything that smacks of politics or social behavior, they cannot be neatly quantified in the way physical measurements are.
Peter _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
