Text 11345, 46 rader
Skriven 2007-02-02 06:32:18 av SLerman (14783.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 11305 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (14743.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Cath0licism and Creati=nism
=======================================
On Feb 1, 10:03 pm, Josh Hill <userepl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dude, science is science: it cannot be suborned, because to do so, one
> would have to suborn thousands of scientists, academic institutions,
> and journals.

Setting aside the "suborned" (yes, I did have to look that one up in
the dictionary) part, science is not always science. History is filled
with scientists who clung to their own theories despite evidence
supporting opposing views that eventually turned out to be correct.
500 years ago (give or take a century), even the most prominent
scientists still believed that the sun revolved around the Earth.
Scientists can be wrong, even when 99% of them agree on something.

As for the topic on hand, there's an oft repeated statement
"Correlation does not equal causation." Temperatures rising during the
period of increasing carbon dioxide emissions is certainly strong
evidence, but it does not, by itself, prove causality. There is other
evidence, such as increased solar activity, that there are other
contributing factors to increasing temperatures. I remember reading in
high school about experiments where adding extra carbon dioxide to an
environment didn't increase the amount present in the atmosphere, but
just resulted in increased plant growth. I still think that the best
way to decrease carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is to stop
hacking up every forest on the planet.

As for the "pro-global warming" side, I'm sure that pumping large
amounts of gases into the atmosphere isn't helping the situation.
While carbon dioxide is otherwise fairly benign, some of the other
chemicals being poured out have many other nasty effects on the
environment. Whether humans are responsible for the whole mess or not,
it's still our cities that are going to get destroyed when sea levels
rise 20 feet, so it's probably a good idea to try to save ourselves.

Anyone that says "obviously humans are causing global warming;
scientists have proven it" doesn't know much about science. Science
works on theories and models, not certainties. There is definitely
enough evidence to consider it a possibility that humans are causing
global warming, but there is also enough evidence to the contrary for
people to legitimately question the theory. Earth's climate is
extremely complex, and scientists don't know enough about it to
construct completely accurate models. Either side could be correct. We
may never even know which side is correct. The more important issue is
whether or not we have enough time to wait to find out which side is
correct.
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)