The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #125287 Message #2773503
Posted By: Stu
25-Nov-09 - 12:50 PM
Thread Name: BS: Climate change: Not??
Subject: RE: BS: Climate change: Not??
"Note: if they could accurately forecast the weather six weeks in advance, to say nothing of a hundred years, I think their forecasts of gloom and doom might have more credibility."
Climate changes study is NOT about predicting the weather (that's meteorology), it's about looking at the fossil, historical and extant records to assess the possibility of the planet warming or cooling, which in turn effects the weather.
I don't know much about the first two, but have come across Palaeoecology in my studies and trends and variations leave their mark in the rocks, in mud and ice cores that any number of scientific disciplines examine to recreate the past. Despite this apparent doctoring of the figures there's a huge amount of evidence for global warming and a substantial amount of evidence that it's man-made.
So let's say we invest large amounts of money and time in creating electric cars, exploiting renewable energy, taking our custodianship of the planet seriously and changing the way we live to lessen our impact on the environment, who looses? New technologies and industries will spring up when the old energy order is finally consigned to the slag heap where it's heading anyway. It's win-win; why question the wisdom of doing this as part of our progress as a species?
One more thing. What if the deniers are wrong? Most on this board won't be immediately effected by the consequences, as usual it'll be the poorest and most vulnerable that suffer first. So we can keep our cheapo flights and 4x4s and watch the people of Bangladesh drown and die on the BBC and Fox News. Isn't that worth avoiding at any cost - even being wrong?