Quote:
Originally Posted by pshrynk
There are things about the climate of the world that are not known, yet. Likely, there was a source of CO2 or methane somewhere that got released, or the Earth's orbit was wobbling close to the sun in conjunction with the summer season in the northern hemisphere.
The hypothesis on that is that the albedo of the planet went way up and there was a subsequent cooling of the polar caps, leading to an ice age. Not provable until then next occurence. 
It is here that the current hypothesis of global warming has it's biggest problem. We really don't know if the current climate fluctuation is due to the CO2 content, but there is a lot of evidence that is pointing that direction. Back when I was taking my planetary science courses in the 70's there was a concern that we might be headed into a new ice age.
The irrefutable fact is that there is climate change occuring right now. The cause may very well be due to CO2 emissions. If not entirely, then certainly in part. The case that scientists are trying to make is that there is aneed to achieve a balance between econmics and environment, if for no other reason than to not accelerate the climate change that is already happening. |
My point is that there have been climate changes, both up and down, both on the small scale (last 1000 years or so) and the big scale (last 3 million years or so). Only in the last 250 years could any of it be attributed to Man.
Currently, the trend is up. It may or may not be attributable to Man. Or a portion may be. But it's not an irrefutable
is, and I feel that the irrefutability is no longer science, but faith. And I don't believe the lives and economic well-being of billions of lives should be controlled by somebody else's faith (or socio-politican agenda, take your pick).
All I've done is point out the limited facts, the limited timeline those facts have been gathered in (as opposed to the scale these things work in), to point out you don't have any certainties to work with. Frankly, I'm being a heck of a lot more scientific than the proponents in this thread.
But even if they are right, technology is steadily moving towards permanent fixes to the problem anyway, almost certainly in the next 50 years (possibly in the next 20). Why the screaming rush to disrupt the world's economy when the cavalry is coming anyways? Unless the goal is
to disrupt the world's economy, and global warming is just an excuse.
Paranoid? Anybody remember the 1970's "We're running out of resources, Civilization will collapse before 2000 A.D."? And the Julius Simon bets? It was those mean, capitalist <blank>ers who turned out right.