traptunderice wroteheatseeker wrotecry of the banshee wrotehttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0830-byrne-20110830,0,7115731.column[quote]The certainly with which some regard the evidence of man-made global warming as undeniably conclusive insults science and its principles. Raising questions about research is exactly what science demands, even if the consensus of the world's best minds declares the world flat. Demands that we all bow to some "consensus" that greenhouse gases cause global warming are as senseless as declaring that there is no evidence to support the theory of evolution.
See, as usual, it's not so cut and dried.Skepticism (especially when there are things such as government funding, departments of government, headed by the appropriately named "czars", new tax - green tax, that is - and so forth are involved) is not necessarilly a bad thing.
Scientists should be skeptical, but that doesn't mean acting like there's dissent where there's not. The scientific community IS in agreement about the presence of man-made global warming, and there are a billion sources which will support this that I'm too lazy to find. I'm all for scientific skepticism, of course, but when the prospective consequences are as dire as those of global warming and when the consensus is this strong, it's time to stop fucking politicking and start changing things.The real obstacle is that environmental damage is a negative externality from doing business that won't show up in the costs UNLESS the government does something about it.
Agreed with heatseeker but to take V to task on a point. The problem is that you, like Perry, are targetting individuals within movements as if that debunks movements' goals. Pointing out that Hay was uber-radical about his thoughts on NAMBLA as if it shines a negative light on the LGBT community is a fallacy. On a side note, NAMBLA gets support from libertarian strands as well insofar as consent and age laws are impositions on the individual by an over-bearing government. Off that tangent, returning to the discussion of global warming, Perry and yourself in mentioning Al Gore point to individuals, activists and scientists, as if that casts a negative light on the results which they can provide. Yes, a scientist with an agenda is going to have skewed results. However, criticisms which Perry refers to of scientists fabricating data has been debunked and regardless of how giant a douche Gore is, the data he provides did not result from his own work. He simply makes a penny on spreading around the information which others have found.[/quote]
No, that article singled out individuals (repub candidates, yawn) to attempt to cast aspersion on an opposing viewpoint, that is that "Republicans are anti-science", hence my counter example to illustrate the fallacy in doing so.
Now it may be that a certain group is less educated on the topic, but that doesn't make them "anti-science".
Anti-science is accepting current theorem as infallable, when as you should know, science is often fluid in that what may be considered a consenus today is turned on it's head, modified, etc. tommorrow. There is a long history of this. Until very recently, Pluto was considered a planet, but it has been reclassified. Just one example of scores of examples.
As for GW, my personal position is that we are most likely impacting it, but the extent of which is attributible to humans and how much is the result of naturally occurring phenomena is the question.
