I think I hit the more "sensationalistic" quotes.
Yeah, this furthers the point of this thread quite well. The following two hysterics, leading to a conclusion based on an open question, punctuated with a threat, is exactly what I was talking about...
if melting worsens global warming, and global warming is widely believed to have helped fuel the killer hurricanes, all the other dangers associated with higher temperatures”from droughts to crop failures to the migration of tropical diseases”start to look more real.
This makes me want to beat the shit out of someone. Like other hurricanes in the past were less "Killers" than these, which incidentally did not kill more people, broken levees from poor management leading to flooding did. And droughts, crop failures, and the migration of tropical diseases does not look real at this point in time, nor have they done so in the past?
The hyperbole in that quote is surpassed only by its ignorance and ethnocentrism. I also liked the "widely believed" quote, never mind that it is in the same context as Iraq was widely believed to have been responsible for 911.
Greenhouse emissions undeniably raise global temperatures. Whether we're entirely responsible for the loss of Arctic ice or only exacerbating a natural phenomenon, now is the time to dial down the gasses. The planet”as Katrina and Rita showed”knows how to hit back.
Remember this lesson, whether you fully understand what is happening or what you can do regarding an issue, use a scary monster to encourage everyone to start swinging wildly in the air.
I wonder if this author really thought it is as easy as just "turning down" a knob, like we simply set the thermostat too high.
and that the question is whether it will affect us adversely or not, and whether we can do anything about it.
This is my view on this question... The climate is changing. It always has and it always will. I don't like heat so much, and I like glaciers, so aesthetically the world is not going in the direction I want.
With globalization the spread of diseases has been crossing the world regardless of temps. I think this is a really bogus reason to be worried about GHGs or disease. In fact this is such an important issue all on its own, and I think we have shown ourselves incapable of handling it in ways worse than the Katrina negligence.
Droughts are important, but again have occured on massive scales in the past. Dealing with them is an issue we should be concerning ourselves with regardless of climate change.
Sea level rise is not that big an issue to me. It can change geography, but geography changes all the time for many many different reasons. Coastal engineering is a solid profession. I live where I do thanks solely to it. I can walk over (in fact I will today) to a standing column of water (in a glass tube) showing exactly how high the water should be here, and how high it could get. I think its 1/3 of this nation is reclaimed seafloor.
Some islands may be permanently effected. But again, knowing geology, eventually those islands would be faced with that problem anyway. Islands don't grow, unless they have volcanic activity. And if they have such activity then sea level rise will likely not effect them in ways that cannot be manage with coastal engineering.
Maybe having lived in tornado alley for most of my life makes me not so worried about storms. Especially if frequency and top intensity is not altered. The question then would be about building properly against storms. They are unlikely to hurt us in a catastrophic way, and no much worse than they have in the past.
And these are essentially the worse case scenarios we are looking at toward the middle/end of the century, not right now. On the other hand we also have no idea what course nature might take during that time regardless of GHGs.
Extinction events have happened more than once on this planet without man's effects. Thus we should be planning for how to deal with the things which might effect us regardless of GHGs.
The possibility that GHGs could bring on an extinction event is unlikely, but as you say, can bring changes we might not want... aesthetically and economically.
More importantly to me, using fossil fuels has greater immediate and direct consequences on quality of life, as well as indirect effects like political/economic instability from foreign controlled fuel supplies.
As an energy source its like a crutch we've been using so long we forgot that with a little extra work we could be free of it and more mobile to boot.
But this is addressing the point you wanted to make. The point of this thread was twofold, to examine the actual state of scientific evidence regarding climate change, and in that process to examine how we are treating science when it impacts a political/emotional issue.
Just as in the sexual themed threads, or EvC ones, what seems to happen is there is a rush to discuss implications toward policy and to make sure ethical/political ideas are kept in mind and reinforced, rather than discussing what we know and what is good science.
More troubling to me than climate change, is the lack of concern for good science. Without it we are doomed to ignorance for a long time and many more bad decisions, and from my vantage point this is coming from all sides including those who are on the E side of the EvC debate.
This raises the question of how important good science is to the majority, regardless of religious persuasion? Will it generally be sacrificed to emotional/political causes? If so, what is the true nature or utility of science? What can be said about knowledge?
Heheheh... I'm trying to uncover the effects of man on the intellectual climate.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
™ Version 4.2