Text 11610, 59 rader
Skriven 2007-02-05 20:10:48 av Josh Hill (15049.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Cath0licism and Creati=nism
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On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 14:30:32 -0800, Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

>Hi Josh,
>Well, right now I am no longer actively meeting and working with folks 
>in the field.  I do know that 8 years ago, when I was regularly meeting 
>students and researchers in earth systems science, that the fix was in. 
>  Researchers that worked against the 'official' consensus that AGW was 
>a major crisis found little grant money and little academic support. 
>those that that supported it got published, got grant money, and got 
>promoted.  And this consensus was not the 'government' but the academic 
>community itself.  Just like continental drift, until real evidence is 
>in, which is going to take 20 years or so, we won't know whether they 
>are calling "Wolf" or are being too timid.  And, there are nay sayers, 
>but you sure don't much of them, do you!

Well, as I've said before, eight or ten years ago the situation was
different, in that there were skeptics in the scientific community, as
there always are when a paradigm shift comes along.

However, by that time, global warming had been researched for many
years, and it was already at the point where it was deemed more likely
true than not. When a new theory is thought by the scientific
community to be valid, it's natural for resources to go into extending
it, rather than to unnecessary attempts to disprove it. But when you
have thousands of scientists working on something, you can bet that if
there's something to be said for the other side it will be said -- and
science being what it is, if the evidence is with it, it will be
accepted.

The plate tectonics business has been misunderstood in the lay
community. For one thing, warming itself is far more like plate
tectonics, i.e., a valid new theory that was ignored for many years
until the evidence made it inescapable. For another, in the case of
plate tectonics, there just wasn't enough evidence at first to accept
it; when the evidence came in, it was accepted. This is precisely what
happened with warming.

As to the nay sayers, they don't seem to have any credibility. As Al
Gore points out, when the coal industry was searching for one they
couldn't even find one among climate scientists, because it's so far
out at this point. There just isn't any real scientific controversy
any more. While there's always a chance that the projections are
wrong, it's less than 10% -- and given the consequences, we can't
afford to overlook a greater than 90% chance, or we'll end up like the
political idiots who failed to take action on the predictions about
New Orleans -- uncannily accurate warnings of the coming disaster that
I remember reading about in Scientific American years before Katrina
hit.

-- 
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
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