Well, I am skeptical of it because I was trained in criteriology and the evidence is dubious. It has, for instance, been warmer in the past than it is now. There have also been times when atmospheric CO2 was vastly higher than it is now. A computer model is not reality. And if it is as serious as people like Al Gore tell us it is, why is his carbon footprint so gargantuan?
Actually, the argument is really about was is causing climate change, not that climate is changing.
ReplyDeleteNo one can really argue that climate change isn't happening. Not and be taken seriously. I've tracked the weather for decades, and it's changing. It is getting warmer globally, storms are becoming more violent, weather is becoming more bizarre and unpredictable, the known cycles are destabilizing. (They will eventually find a new equilibrium, but we don't know what that will be.)
And human overpopulation makes the price for all these changes ever steeper. Because more people are living in more areas affected by climate change. You simply cannot argue that the glaciers are not melting, nor that the Arctic ice cap is shrinking. The consequences of that melte for humans living in sea coast areas have only begun to be manifest.
What we don't know for certain is the cause. Natural process? human-cause amplified process? or some synergistic combination of causes? THAT's what we don't know. It's to that the arguments go, because if humans ARE part of the cause then we must also be part of the solution.
Confirmation bias works for the denialists just as much as for those who want to believe.
Well, I certainly would never deny that the climate is changing, Art, because that is what it dies, from moment to moment, in fact. It is chaotic system that we scarcely understand at all (as Freeman Dyson has frequently pointed out). I think the various grand theories are largely baseless and that the proponents have ulterior motives, There has been no warming since 1998, I believe. So says Phil Jones of the East Anglia CRU. I remember the New Ice Age scare back in the '70s. I remain unconvinced that we predict the direction of the changing climate.
ReplyDeleteGood article on climate change at BR:
ReplyDeletehttp://bostonreview.net/BR32.1/emanuel.php