Re: Gunner's Status


"Buerste" <Buerste@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" <huntres23@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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<snip>
Well, you know how I feel about the Global Warming(kumbaya) scam. I
still can't understand how anyone with two synapses firing can fall for
it. Oh, I think I just got the answer.

Between Dr. Tom and Dr. Larry, we seem to have all major forms of denial
covered except for the health hazards of smoking, the Earth traveling
around the sun, and the holocaust.

'Good to have you with us, doctors. It's a relief not to have to believe
anything so inconvenient, and to have such outstanding experts to help us
discredit 90% of the world's top climate scientists.

I can't wait to re-read your PhD. dissertations.


And I always gave you credit for firing synapses! AGW is not a voting
issue for and by scientists...

The legitimate climatologists appear to have weighed in and they would
disagree.

The fact that the AGW folks refuse to use the "Scientific Method" and
refuse to debate the issue is what frightens me the most.

I have no idea what you're talking about here but it sounds like a
cock-and-bull story.

And, they push the "We're taking control of the energy, money and
political power!" position first and foremost..

I've yet to hear a climate scientist say any of that. That's you're
interpretation of the politics, not the science.

It's not science anymore. It's not denial, it's skepticism!

It's self-serving politics.


Let's just wait and see if the issue sort's itself out as more facts and
data comes along. My mind can be changed with good evidence.

Well, that's good to hear.

That doesn't exist yet.

Not you, not Larry, not me, nor anyone else I know -- certainly no one
here -- has the faintest clue about whether it does or not.


Smoking is bad.
Earth orbits the Sun.
Jews were murdered.
Global Warming facts are not complete, the issue is not closed for debate.

(Does that clear it all up?)

My feeling is that the global warming facts will never be complete to a
sufficient degree to satisfy you. Nor will you ever know when and if it is.
I'd have more confidence in your judgments about the validity of string
theory or the existence of naked singularities or dark energy.

With all due respect, Tom, you don't have enough knowledge to be skeptical
about it. Neither do any of the rest of us. For you to engage in the
"debate" implies that you would know enough to debate. You don't, and it's
likely that you never will. Neither will Larry, I, or 99.99% of the
population. We're no more able to engage in the "debate," nor to understand
those who can, than we are to engage in the debate about the evolution of
black holes. The idea that we could is ludicrous.

All we have to go on is the reputation of the people who *can* engage in the
"debate," if there really is a debate. I don't know if there really is. What
passes for "debate" sounds an awful lot like the "debate" over evolution
versus creationism -- it contains some of the same elements, and even the
politics are not dissimilar.

The one thing I can see about it is the history of the conflict. First,
mainstream science began to coalesce around the idea that the Earth is
warming and that greenhouse gases are largely responsible for the current
pattern. Then there was a reaction from the right, because the right is
worried about the economic implications if it's all true. This provoked a
defense from the left. So now it's a left/right issue.

But not really. It's still mainstream science versus the reaction. That the
left has taken up science's banner is just an artifact of the political
basis of reaction. It has nothing to do with the science, which is still
clearly on the side of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming. The con game
that's telling us that there is no general agreement in favor of it is
EXACTLY like the con game that's telling us there is no general agreement in
favor of evolution. It's coming from the same political angle, in fact, only
the con game on global warming is a lot more sophisticated. It's one hell of
a good shell game, and none of us knows where the pea is.

So that's all you're doing, and all you can do -- argue the politics,
disguised as science. You can't understand the science. Neither can I. It is
many years of study over our heads.

I don't have an opinion on it of my own. If I have to engage the issue, at
the level of voting or whatever, I'll do what I did about landing a man on
the moon, or what I'm doing now about nuclear power -- I'll try to separate
the mainstream science from the quacks and cranks with political motivations
on the fringes, and I'll go with the mainstream science. It's not easy now,
since the issue has been politically polarized, but I'll throw out the Al
Gores and the Michael Crichtons, along with the other outliers and the
freaks on both sides, and take my best shot.

It won't be because I have an opinion on the science. Opinions are what one
has when he has exhausted the known facts; I can't even read the facts.
Neither can anyone else posting here. Your opinion, and Larry's, and mine,
apply only to whom we believe, not to the science. All you're reading and
learning, and Larry, is polarized arguments that are indistinguishable from
con games. In that regard, you could take all of our opinions, add them up
and calculate their value, and we'd find that they're worth less than the
powder it would take to blow them all to hell.

d8-)

--
Ed Huntress



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