Global warming, right... (1 Viewer)

[Redwinger]

Sure, they can be questioned, and are. In fact, that's what the peer-review process exactly is. Now, you would look pretty silly questioning such experts, because the extent of your background on the subject probably does not come from any formal training, it seems a lot more likely that your info comes from strident, biased, cherry-picked sources.

However, Red, debating the subject with you is simply a non-starter when the peer-review process gets labelled with a dismissive wave of the hand as a "good ole boy network". I find that sort of blanket statement profoundly uninformed and curiously resonant with AM talk radio themes. What a convenient refuge to run to when one doesn't like what one hears: "They're all in cohoots!"

So, we get to decide when we want to listen to and trust the experts (DDT, mercury = bad) and when we just think they're trying to screw us all over? Way too black helicopter for me.

I can visualize the hands lunging towards their keyboards right now: "But we have PROOF that DDT and mercury are harmful! There's no PROOF that CO2 and global climate are linked!!" And such an assertion would demonstrate more ignorance. There is a ton of empirically collected data that show such a relationship exists, and FWIW, these same data are also in league with Milankovich's forcing hypothesis, which, ironically, is a favorite fallback position to global warming deniers: the earth is continually going through cycles; there's no way humans could alter such cycles. Yes! Milankovich apprears to have been right; a complex relationship of solar variance, axial wobbling, and other factors all work together to create long-term climate trends, and one of these forcing factors is greenhouse gas concentrations. And, in this 600,000+ year sample of climate data, there has never existed a natural source of carbon dumping that even comes close to what has occurred in the past 150 years. The largest volcanos are a mere duck fart (methane, bad analogy) compared to what has been introduced by humans. So the issue isn't about whether the earth will enter another such cycle, it is about the rate at which such a cycle is being forced. Very, very bad for ecosystems. And I find the assertion that "this rapid warming will be GOOD for us!" arrogant and equally uninformed.

But, ears plugged, la-la-la, science doesn't have a shred of evidence upon which to base any assumptions. Or so says a small and shrinking contingent of people with deceptively shrill voices. (And note that a vanishingly small proportion of them can be considered members of the climate scientist community, "good ole boys" or not.)

Wow! We should all just listen to Wes and Morty as they are experts in the field. Obviously they are more qualified than anyone else, they are climatologists and should never be questioned. In the mean time I am going to check up on the am radio scene as apparently I have been slacking with never listening to it. There is no changing my mind and I don't expect to change others. I just choose not to buy into all the liberal tree hugging BS, as 17,200 "scientists" choose not to buy into either. This thread has run its course for me.

 

[hypertech]

Me thinks we are past the 100 civil posts and are done here.