Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
> All I'm after is that you start thinking and studying the issues for
> yourselves and don't let the fiction writers and the popular press,
> driven by an anti-knowledge, anti-science, good-old-boy
> administration of oil-rich and weapons-happy thieves, keep you
> blindered.
I have and the Gore movie delivers extreme scenarios and
scientific inaccuracies.
The predictions of what will happen are derived completely from
computer models which do not adequately incorporate the
complexities of climate processes. Many elements of those
processes are not adequately understand, a point acknowledged by
some of the modellers themselves. The pattern of temperature
change is inconsistent with the pattern of CO2 change.
During the Medieval Warm Period the planet was at least a warm as
it now. One of the key pieces of science "proving" that the Earth
is warmer now than in the last 1000 years ("the hockey stick")
has recently been reviewed by a panel of statisticians and been
found to be badly flawed and not capable of supporting with any
certainty the conclusions which were drawn from it.
> All the scientists I know in the business of planetary science,
> environment and geology, are 100% behind the concepts put on the
> table by this movie. My years at JPL and in my position working
> relationships with education, science and government from the
> computer industry gave me access to a very large number of these
> people. I choose to credit their ideas more than any science fiction
> writer or news person.
I am in the business of environmental science (ecology and
experimental design) and I do not rely on either writers or
reporters for my information. Despite the frequent claim -- now
made by you -- that there is a consensus on this issue, there
isn't. Some of the scientists who are now crying "global warming"
were, 30 years ago, saying we were on the brink of another ice age.
> However, if you choose to believe that we should go on dumping
> millions of tons of pollutants and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
> because you don't believe there's anything to worry about, I pity
> your grandchildren.
I pity my grandchildren if hundreds of billions of dollars are
wasted pursuing a non-problem. The CO2 released by us is a tiny
fraction of that circulating and, as someone else has pointed
out, plain ordinary water vapour is the main greenhouse gas.
The doomsday scenarios are simply inconsistent with the available
empirical evidence. Sea level is rising, yes, but slowly and at a
much slower rate than predicted by the global warming models.
The notion that diseases will suddenly become a major problem is
so obviously silly that I don't understand why anyone thinks it
is likely. (Remember, I live in the tropics where we already have
global warming but I don't see people dropping dead all over the
place.)
And so on.
Do we have environmental problems? Yes. Is global warming one of
them? No.
> That's the last I'll say on the matter here. Anyone want to chat
> about it with me personally, send me email directly.
That's all I think I'm going to say, too. There are too many
other places where I can have this argument if I want. 8-)
Keith McG
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