Can someone familiar with the thinking at Uncommon Descent explain why there is such opposition to the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming? There’s this today, following several long commentaries by VJ Torley on the pope’s encyclical, mostly negative. I don’t get the connection. Is it general distrust of science? Or of the “Academy”? Or is there something about the idea that we may be provoking a major extinction event that is antithetical to ID? Or is it, possibly, that the evidence for major extinction events in the past is explains the various “explosions” that are adduced as evidence, if not for ID, then against “Darwinism”?
I’m honestly curious. Personally, I’m really concerned about global warming, and about the more general impact the human species is having on the rest of the world’s ecology, not because I think that major extinctions are inherently tragic (I know Earth will become lifeless one day, and that major extinctions are inevitable) but because human beings evolved to live in one ecosystem, and are unlikely to be fit for a very different one. So we are on the list of potential extinctees. And a hell of a lot of human suffering will occur if our climate changes too rapidly. If there’s anything we can do to slow things down, surely we should?
And your wife, even if she may be too polite to say it, probably thinks the same about you.
I left school at the age of sixteen and have had no formal education to speak of since then.
Why do you say that I take no notice of you? We wouldn’t be having this conversation if that were the case. Taking notice and agreeing with what you argue are not the same thing.
Well I have looked at your links, but only briefly.
From your link to the AAAS
First message
So do people who have signed the petition – Freeman Dyson has this to say:
Second message from your link:
Of course there is a risk. What I would like to find out is the size of the risk. How do the models compare with reality? How have past predictions faired? Why do some top scientists consider that the models are inaccurate?
Third message
Lord Christopher Monckton discuuses costs in this video at about the forty and a half minute mark.
From your link They write:
Well I think its a good idea to come up with ways to use fossil fuels in a more efficient and responsible ways, but I am still not convinced that there is an appreciable amount of global warming due to human activities.
CharlieM,
Lord Monckton is a moron, I’m afraid. I’ve seen more than enough of him.
Me either. Not convinced. But I am on balance inclined to think it true, and with all the fringe benefits, I think action is justified. If climate change is not a reason to reduce fossil fuel burning, but finite resources, acidification and other pollutants are, why argue against action, and instead promote the ostrich-like, politically-fuelled nonsense of the Moncktons and Robinsons of this world? I wouldn’t favour promoting a lie – getting reductions because of something that is known to be false – but the solution is the same regardless of the driver.
Of course, politics is the another strand. I actually doubt the ability of humanity to collectively do much about the problems we face, and it’s not just because of the baffling tenacity of the ‘deniers’ in pursuing their campaign of misinformation. Climate Change is but a part of a rather worrying whole. We have gone forth and multiplied.
So no arguments about what he is saying, just your opinion of him as a person.
CharlieM,
There’s no point us arguing with each other about him. I think his approach to science is poor, and I have seen enough to know I do not consider him credible. You do, that’s wonderful.
It’s like arguments by quote-mine: pointless. Paste and counter-paste. I’ll see your ‘expert’ and raise you mine.
Fair enough.