Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
So yeah, emissions are probably bad, but one shouldn't automatically treat everything the enviro-activists say as gosple.
I wouldn't call The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and other such agencies and institutions "enviro-activists". If they are, I have to wonder who
does count as a scientific institution qualified to make these conclusions.
The heavy reliance on "exception cases" reminds me of the evolution vs. creationism debate. For every bank of evidence in support of evolution, someone says "Yeah, but once they found a fish fossil in THIS layer of bedrock so the entire theory of evolution has to be FALSE!" As the
Science article I linked to shows, the concensus among the scientific community overwhelmingly in support of a human factor in global warming. It's not some 50/50 mix or a countervoice for every voice -- the major bodies of scientists investigating this agree that there's a human factor at work here.
Science journal wrote:
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.
The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.