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[Jingus 0]

Have you read the book? Have you seen the pages and pages of research he gathered to back up his points?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Have you read the book? Have you seen the pages and pages of research he gathered to back up his points?

 

Sixteen of 18 top U.S. climate scientists interviewed by Knight Ridder, however, said the Harvard-trained author is bending scientific data and distorting research.

 

Gathering together a bunch of research does not necessarily produce a valid argument. For instance, I could cite a buch of racist Middle Eastern & Nazi German science to "prove" that Jews are evil, but I would still be wrong.

 

Here's a report that quotes scientists who claim that Crichton has distorted their research:

 

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/art...tons_footnotes/

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

And, just out of curiosity, I looked up some stuff about the NAS scientist (Lindzen) that was pro-Crichton from the 1st article I linked to from the Seattle Times:

 

Lindzen charged "oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC."

 

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen

[Jingus 0]

Well yeah, that's great, but what about, y'know, reading the book before dismissing it?

[EricMM 0]

Jingus.

 

How about more than ten qualified scientists have already read the book, and discredited it.

 

My reading the book, possibly liking it, and even agreeing or being swayed by it won't negate that fact, much like you liking it and having been swayed by it doesn't negate that fact.

 

So why are you so focused on supporting flawed and discredited literature? You don't see me going on about Erlich's "Population Bomb"

[Jingus 0]

I'd ask who those scientists were, how credible they're seen as being within their specific fields, exactly what they said, what their affiliations are, and who they receive their funding from.

 

I liked the book so much because, for the first time in my life, it made me really think about global warming. Prior to that, all my life I'd just assumed that the theory was completely true. Why wouldn't it be? All the media said it was true. Heck, everyone knew that manmade pollutions were thinning the ozone layer/creating a greenhouse effect/whatever the current theory is. I believed it blindly and never once even thought of questioning it. And then the book came along, I read it, and for the first time wondered about how much I really "knew" about the subject.

 

That's the important part: one's desire to know more than one does right now. That's the bitch about ignorance: it's a disease that has no symptoms visible to those suffering from it. Whether or not the book is right, the fact that it got my wheels turning about all this stuff is what I prize most.

 

(And it's not all about global warming, but about environmentalism in general: it's got a hilarious little bit where it debunks all those myths about "pristine virgin green forests" existing back before humans arrived in America.)

[Justice 0]

Well, there is a point to be said for scientists getting in a huff because they personally believe one thing, and use science to back it up. I mean, Christ, that's all we do on these boards today anyways. There is a distinctly liberal side in the scientific community, and a great deal of nay-sayers are pushed out and picked up by companies, which would likely instantly discredit them with the rest of the community. It's like a case of 'Groupthink' on a large scale on both sides, really.

 

My biggest problem is that few people have looked at an overarching study going back a great deal of years. We can say we are getting hotter today, but there has been a decent amount of evidence to say that the Middle Ages was hotter than it was today, along with a constant heat increase for over a hundred years now. How do we not know this is a natural cycle if no one ever checks that far back?

[EricMM 0]

Michael C. has this entire complex about how man is so inferior, and nothing we accomplish is worth an iota in the grand scheme of things. That global warming can be an act of man must be such anathema to him. Man is a speck, a nothing. MiketheSC goes on about the HUBRIS of man, to claim that our actions could effect the environment in any signifigant way. Well, shucks. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It's all stuck underground, not in the atmosphere. If we burn it, turn it into a gas, and stuck in in the atmosphere again, what the FUCK do you THINK is going to happen? It's hubris to think that God will provide a clean and noble and unchanged Earth for us, regardless of what we do.

 

And don't talk to me about biased sources, because look at what Smitty posted, my God.

 

Your one guy is taking oil money, don't question my hundreds.

 

Have you seen "Thank You For Smoking"?

 

The drive to question things is not always right. Of course people want you to question global warming. They want to sell you oil.

[Jingus 0]

Michael C. has this entire complex about how man is so inferior, and nothing we accomplish is worth an iota in the grand scheme of things. That global warming can be an act of man must be such anathema to him. Man is a speck, a nothing. MiketheSC goes on about the HUBRIS of man, to claim that our actions could effect the environment in any signifigant way. Well, shucks. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It's all stuck underground, not in the atmosphere. If we burn it, turn it into a gas, and stuck in in the atmosphere again, what the FUCK do you THINK is going to happen? It's hubris to think that God will provide a clean and noble and unchanged Earth for us, regardless of what we do.

 

And he's right. Volcanic eruptions spew out more fluorocarbons and CO2 than mankind has ever produced. Short of a massive thermonuclear war, there's really not a hell of a lot that humans can do that would have a lasting effect on the earth as a whole.

 

The drive to question things is not always right. Of course people want you to question global warming. They want to sell you oil.

 

The drive to believe things is not always right. Of course people want you to believe global warming. They want their research to keep getting funded.

 

That's a cheap shot on my part, but you should never assume that you know a person's true motivations for anything they do.

[EricMM 0]

No, Jingus, look.

 

Yes, if as many volcanoes go off tomorrow as were going off millions of years ago during the age of the dinosaurs et al, the Earth WOULD warm super drastically.

 

But just because one volcano emits incredible amounts of CO2 doesn't mean that an SUV doesn't. Maybe you do not understand the tonnage of carbon that goes up every day. But it's not insignifigant, and evidence shows that it's having an effect.

 

I'm not talking about a lasting effect, in terms of a rock spinning around on earth. As I've said countless times before, there's nothing man can do to fixate the earth on some crispified course that will turn it into a cinder. It just won't happen. What will happen is that we will alter our environment enough that some parts of Earth we currently populate will become uninhabitable, that some people who never had to worry about Malaria suddenly will. That some areas will get 1/2 as much rain as they get now, and some will get 3x. That the tropics can and will expand, and so will the number of tropical storms and hurricanes that the US experiances.

 

We won't destroy the earth, but we will, we are, inconviencing ourselves.

 

And I will NOT get into a credibility argument with you, because both sides have lobbyists. Again, if you're going to defame the entire body of Pro-Warming scientists, then you'll defame anyone on the words of a few.

[Guest The Satanic Angel]

And he's right. Volcanic eruptions spew out more fluorocarbons and CO2 than mankind has ever produced. Short of a massive thermonuclear war, there's really not a hell of a lot that humans can do that would have a lasting effect on the earth as a whole.

 

Volcanic eruptions are a positive for the environment. The ash cloud serves to cool the earth by blocking UV and all that from the sun. I don't have the book with me, but I'd be glad to edit in credentials when I get home.

[EricMM 0]

Thats a fallacious argument, because eruptions are neither positive nor negative to the environment, because they ARE the environment.

 

We shouldn't be arguing about volcanoes because we aren't causing them.