Text 2081, 83 rader
Skriven 2006-06-07 23:27:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2527.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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On Tue, 6 Jun 2006 22:50:56 +0000 (UTC), Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

>Hi Josh,
>
>Much snippage.  you have a lot more time to type than I do...
>
>Maybe I am out of the loop, but I still do hear a thing or two, and 
>perhaps I am just more cynical than you are.
>
>IIRC, it has only been in the last few years that it could be definitely 
>decided that there was actually a real warming trend.  The real problem 
>is, Did Man have that much to do with it?
>
>Now, I am not going to say we didn't have anything to do with it. 
>Several have played with the idea we forestalled a mini-ice-age, and a 
>lot more have basically thinking we are just another noise source in a 
>complex signal.  Basically, from the data and studies I have seen, I get 
>the 10-20% figure.  Nature is a lot bigger than we are, for all our 
>vanity and hubris.

As far as I can tell as a layman, that just isn't true anymore, which
is why I said you seem to be out of the loop. There's a /lot/ of
research being done on this issue, and knowledge is advancing at
accordingly.

Anyway, as I've said, from my perspective, we have only one planet,
and the process is irreversible. That's why I supported action back
when we knew less, and why I think we have to pay attention to some of
the worst case "turning point" scenarios. Will Europe actually enter
an ice age? We don't know for sure, but even a one-in-twenty chance
that the most densely populated area on earth will be covered by
glaciers on the basis of what we're doing now seems to me ample cause
for action.

>And I still stand by my concerns that a lot of this hysteria is 
>politically motivated.  I know the pressures that were put on 
>researchers to toe the party line about AGW.  I just feel the bastards 
>have won, again...

Even if you could co-opt three quarters of the scientists out there,
that would still leave the rest! And, really, I can think of a number
of cases in which industry has been known to subvert scientific
research -- the tobacco companies, the drug companies, what have you
-- but none in which public interest groups have.

So I see this very differently: corrupt energy companies paying for
false results the way the tobacco companies did, and quite possibly
hiding studies that don't flatter their cause, as the tobacco
companies also did. Some peer pressure on the other side and some bias
on the part of the peer review panels, who are more apt to fund
experiments that they think are right and morally worthwhile, but
nowhere near enough pressure to produce anything like the consensus
that we see today from the responsible scientific community.

And there's the matter of character. in general, I haven't found that
people who work for public-oriented groups such as universities and
environmental organizations engage in anything like the level of
chicanery that corporate executives do. Public service people tend to
care about people and ideals rather than profit, to be guided by
conscience. I /have/ sometimes seen what I regard as untoward pressure
against dissenting scientific or conservative viewpoints, e.g.
unscientific attacks on research that purported to show a correlation
between race and IQ, but I'm not aware of any case in which that sort
of activity has been sufficient to suppress research or create a
consensus of the sort we see in the case of global warming.

-- 
Josh

"I'm not going to play like I've been a person who's spent hours involved with
foreign policy.
I am who I am." - George W. Bush
                                                                               
                   
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