Bill Funk <
[email protected]> wrote in message news:<
[email protected]>...
> On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 15:12:51 -0500, "C. E. White"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >To sum it up - even if global warming is true, I believe the cure is worse than
> >the disease. And furthermore, I think that even if it is true, the case is being
> >dramatically overstated.
> >
> >Ed
>
> I don't think there's any question that global warming is happening.
> But there are a lot of questions about that:
>
> *Why* is it happening? Truth is, we don't know. We can *model*
> scenarios that say we are at fault, but those models don't admit that
> it's happened in the past, without the possibility of us interfering
> at all.
Are you saying that the existing models don't fit the past climate
spikes? At what point do they miss? Or are you saying that because
there was warming in the past without human interaction, the fit of
the model explaining current warming as tied to current human CO2
release can't be correct? Similar to the argument that, since forest
fires have been going on since the dawn of forests, current forest
fires can't possibly be ignited by human actions?
> *How long* will it last? Again, we don't know.
> Will reducing the CO2 output from our manufacturing/transportation
> slow/reverse the warming? Again, we don't know. And, we have
> absolutely no idea of what would happen if we were to reverse it.
> Would we enter another ice age? We simply don't know.
Well, we do know that we are entering a new ice age; these cycles are
pretty much worked out, and in 4-5 thousand years we are going to be
pretty damn chilly. But most people are more interested in where we
will be for the next few decades. And right now it looks like
continuing to perpetually increase the amount of solar energy trapped
by the atmosphere is probably a worse idea than not doing so.
>
> Models can be made to say anything the people making the models want
> to hear. That's reality.
Not hardly. Show me a model showing that global warming is related to
astrology, then you can say this. In any event, science consists of
'dueling models'; you narrow it down to a few that explain the current
data better than the rest, then narrow it down further by seeing which
ones predict new data better.
> It's stupid to say that CO2 that we are putting out is the cause of
> global; warming, then push something like Kyoto, which merely shifts
> the location of the CO2 production. Yet, that's what the tree-huggers
> want.
Similarly, it's stupid to take a little step away from the bed in the
morning, when what I really need to do is get to my job 20 miles away.
Yet, it works out somehow, and I doubt that it would do so were I not
to take that first step. What's the alternative plan? Tell the third
world that they need to keep their living standard the way it is
unless they can figure out how to improve it without CO2 emissions, so
that we can maintain our standard of living with our vast CO2
emissions? And when they decline to take that advice, just shrug our
shoulders and say, 'Well hell, we tried, but they won't cooperate'?
>
> Maybe if we had more facts about what the problem is, we could come up
> with some workable answers.
Facts? Like what, two tablets coming down from heaven with a
mathematical model of climate inscribed on them, and God's handwritten
guarantee? Fact: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Fact: we are producing CO2
at an unprecedented rate. Fact: the climate is heating up at a
similarly unprecedented rate. Fact: the best fitting and best
supported models show the major agent of the rising temperature to be
the CO2 release. Fact: there isn't enough wiggle room in the models to
eliminate the actions of human CO2 release as a prime cause, without
postulating some big unknown never-before-identified factor. Fact: as
more and more research has piled up over the years, the anthrogenic
CO2 global warming model has not been overthrown, contrary to the
predictions of the opponents over the years; in fact, areas of
uncertainty have become clearer and clearer and estimates of model
parameters have become more precise.
