"What makes skeptics skeptical is the accumulating evidence that theories predicting catastrophe from man-made climate change are impervious to evidence.Warnings about cataclysmic warming increase in stridency as evidence of warming becomes more elusive.
America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence about climate change. Alarmists will fight this because the first casualty would be the carefully cultivated and media-reinforced myth of consensus -- the bald assertion that no reputable scientist doubts the gravity of the crisis, doubts being conclusive evidence of disreputable motives or intellectual qualifications."
-- George Will, finally sticking his toe in the water - and his neck out - to observe (and call "bullshit!" on) the environmentalist's cultish thinking - shared by too many scientists who ought to know better - but, apparently, no longer by certain conservative columnists at The Washington Post.
I completely agree. Before assuming that it is the massive increase in populations, the clearing of forests, and the global pollution by oil companies, plastics, and other substances that don't naturally break down - or take a few centuries to do so, we should be considering those things that serve as evidence for climate change.
ReplyDeleteThe main signs would seem to be:
1. increase in number or intensity of natural disasters
2. change in animal behaviour
3. record heatwaves/cold snaps
4. melting of the polar icecaps
5. coral bleaching and other evidence of ocean warming
Putting aside useless ideologies, these are the considerations. Never mind whose trying to profit from carbon trading, or the effect on employment in the logging industry; the question is whether there is climate change and whether this is man-made.
I think points 1 and 3 are tenuous at best. Hasn't the past been filled with volcanic eruptions and tidal waves? Haven't there been extremes of temperature recorded when there was no mechanisation, no smog, etc?
Obviously if the polar caps melt and the ocean temperatures change, that has terrible consequences. Animals, being reliant for their survival on the weather and their environs, have a good idea when something is going down so if they start behaving outside their normal pattern, that's a reliable test that something's 'not right'.
Couldn't it be a coincidence that the ravages of the twentieth century, with its leap in both human consumption and production, have the potential to manifest similar effects?
A good scientist uses this as a jumping off point. It might not be CO2 from factories, it could be from the Sun. Why is the Sun hotter then/why are the sun's rays penetrating further or focussed more intently?
What can we do about this?
Always, is it a threat? If it is, what can we do about it? If it can't be stopped, then how can we protect ourselves against it?
And if it isn't the sun, and it isn't human industry, then what is it?