Hello. I should say that it is starting to look like one of the more interesting off topic discussions on the list as of recently. My reply is between your lines, Jostein.
> Without knowing what American politicians have said it's hard to know > if I'm duplicating anyone's statements, but I thik it's very unlikely > that I'll be "echoeing" any one of them. Politicians always have an > agenda that primarily focus on re-election, so their time perspective > is a little short for this kind of discussion. I think politicians are also after as much money as possible (natural for humans, right?). This has to be taken into account as well anyway, I think. > To use their contribution to the argument as an excuse for not seeking > facts seems like a rather lame excuse to me. Bring in media as well, > if you like. In these matters I find that journalistic > oversimplification is the main problem with bringing the scientific > results to the larger public. Yes, but without (over)simplifications you cannot reach Boris-the-average and make them roll these gears between the ears. And of course, journalists themselves are not always well versed in the subject they are writing about, thus they have to come up with whatever they think will gain them more rating. I sincerely believe here that in order to get reasonably decent picture of what's going on, one either has to know exactly which journalists to read or one has to look in scientific sources. > What I would like to add, however, is that we're actually discussing > two quite different things at the same time. One is climate change. > The other is human influence on climate change. Both are fascinating, I should say. > We know from eg. glaciology in all mountaineous regions from the > tropics to the arctics that it has been getting warmer since around > 1880. That's climate change. Denying that this happens is really head > in sand, and has nothing to do with either politics or mass media. The > info is there and easily accessible via eg. google. Yes, but climate change does not necessarily mean steady heating or steady cooling, right? > Then based on the info comes the discussion of whether this is caused > by humans or is part of a scheme greater than we can handle anyway. Frankly, I think that humans tend to overestimate their influence here. > I didn't say it was USA vs. rest of the world, btw. I just looked at > the posts in the archive at one particular point in time, and saw a > very consistent pattern. Since then, other people have chimed in and > thankfully blurred it. :-) Good, I would think it would be very difficult to comprehend such an eventuality. > Finally, as I have said in an earlier post, it is the *rate* of change > that give reason to worry. Let's say for example that the ocan rise > 10m in the next 100 years. Even a century is a short time if you have > to move a billion people. See eg. here: > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060517175614.htm Hmmm, this page you mentioned does not open from my office PC. I'll try at home. -- Boris -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
