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Old 07-21-2008, 01:51 PM   #256
DMcCunney
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami View Post
Dennis, I see your point about the glaciers, though I think the current trend is more sharply defined than that. It's an area in which reasonable people can certainly disagree; since there are so many other problems associated with pollution that is generated along with the CO2, not to mention the geopolitical instabilities around fossil oil, I'd say we're better off to act now to look for better energy sources. It seems we may be in agreement there, in any case.
We are. I concur on the need to reduce pollution and find alternative power sources. I simply don't see doing so as doing more than slowing the warming trend. One fruitful question to ask is "Okay. If the entire Earth was tropical when the dinosaurs roamed, why did things get cooler and glaciation occur?" The answer to that will shed light on why things are getting warmer.

(NB: I haven't Looked Stuff Up lately, and don't know what the currently proposed answers to that question might be.)

Quote:
But then again, my willingness to accept ambiguity and try to see multiple sides of an argument may be another one of those unstated assumptions I absorbed from an early age-- my parents (particularly my mother) are much the same way.
I feel the same, though I suspect my father had more to do with it. Dad defined himself as an agnostic, but was careful to distinguish that from atheism. He didn't believe in God, but he also didn't believe there was no God. He had no evidence he could accept as valid one way of the other, and chose not to commit to one belief or the other. (He also read SF when he was younger, and there were old SF books lying around the house. I think the first SF I ever read was a copy of the classic Healy and McComas _Adventures in Time and Space_ anthology, which was the second SF collection to be issued as a hardcover book. I was young enough to not understand eveything I read in it, but the Sense of Wonder came through very clearly.)

Quote:
I've also put some work into trying to deconstruct my assumptions over the years-- I think it's best to consider that an ongoing project, don't you?
Life is an ongoing project, so yes.
______
Dennis
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