And frankly, I'm getting sick of people who don't even have a single scientific degree attacking scientists. It all reeks of the same attitude I was innundated with as a kid by my classmates because I believed in evolution and dinosaurs.
I actually sympathize with this point of view, because I've been in exactly the same position because I accept evolution as a scientific theory. I remember one discussion group (in a Sunday school class at a Unitarian church, of all places) with six kids plus the adult who was leading the group arguing for creationism, and me all by myself arguing for evolution. Not surprisingly, nobody convinced anybody to change their mind.
However, I do not accept the implied claim in your statement that climate science is in the same position as the theory of evolution. It isn't. We do not understand the climate well enough for that, but for political reasons it is impossible for "mainstream" climate scientists to admit that. That's not a good situation.
As far as reducing our use of fossil fuels, there are good reasons to do that anyway. IMO, we should have made that a national security priority back in the 1970's, when the economic and foreign policy consequences of buying oil from the Middle East became clear enough. But linking the argument for reducing fossil fuels to the argument for reducing CO2 does not help; it hinders, by muddying the waters of what should be a straightforward argument about foreign policy with a highly contentious argument about climate change.
These guys are basically saying "Don't cut carbon! The planet isn't getting warmer." Now they have changed their answer to "Don't cut carbon. It's not the reason the planet is getting warmer."
This may be a valid criticism of at least one faction in the climate change debate; but showing that that faction is wrong does not show that another faction must be right.
The way it looks to me, everybody is both right in part, and wrong in part: the climate is changing, humans are contributing to the change, but cutting CO2 emissions will not fix the problem, because there are too many other factors involved that we don't understand.
If you get home in the mid-afternoon and you're really hungry, do you put on the roast for tonight's dinner and wait several hours for it to be ready, or do you have a quick sandwich now while you're preparing the roast?
A partial solution is better than sticking to the dogma that no solution be attempted until a wholly-conclusive one is found.
This assumes that reducing CO2 emissions is in fact a partial solution. It may not be; it may, on net, make things worse, because the cost of making the reductions may be greater than the expected benefits.
A good point, but climate change isn't an isolated issue. Most CO2 measures also address the issue of how we're going to supply resources to our universally-acknowledged overpopulation problem - increased efficiencies, alternate fuels, so on and so forth. Most of them provide benefits outside the climate change arena.
As I said in my post upthread, I agree that there are plenty of good reasons to reduce fossil fuel use regardless of where one stands on climate change; if we'd been smart we'd have made eliminating dependence on Middle Eastern oil a national priority in the 1970's.
I actually sympathize with this point of view, because I've been in exactly the same position because I accept evolution as a scientific theory. I remember one discussion group (in a Sunday school class at a Unitarian church, of all places) with six kids plus the adult who was leading the group arguing for creationism, and me all by myself arguing for evolution. Not surprisingly, nobody convinced anybody to change their mind.
However, I do not accept the implied claim in your statement that climate science is in the same position as the theory of evolution. It isn't. We do not understand the climate well enough for that, but for political reasons it is impossible for "mainstream" climate scientists to admit that. That's not a good situation.
As far as reducing our use of fossil fuels, there are good reasons to do that anyway. IMO, we should have made that a national security priority back in the 1970's, when the economic and foreign policy consequences of buying oil from the Middle East became clear enough. But linking the argument for reducing fossil fuels to the argument for reducing CO2 does not help; it hinders, by muddying the waters of what should be a straightforward argument about foreign policy with a highly contentious argument about climate change.
These guys are basically saying "Don't cut carbon! The planet isn't getting warmer." Now they have changed their answer to "Don't cut carbon. It's not the reason the planet is getting warmer."
This may be a valid criticism of at least one faction in the climate change debate; but showing that that faction is wrong does not show that another faction must be right.
The way it looks to me, everybody is both right in part, and wrong in part: the climate is changing, humans are contributing to the change, but cutting CO2 emissions will not fix the problem, because there are too many other factors involved that we don't understand.