Comments Posted By mrk
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CITIZEN SCIENTIST RE-IGNITES GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICISM
Lol, I guess it looks like this brave "human monkey wrench" hasn't exactly stopped the "global warming juggernaut" in its tracks afterall, except of course in the minds of the right-wing nutcases. Just like how we're finally winning Iraq despite liberal naysayers, and the GOP is doing fine, Bush is a decent, compassionate president, we're in the middle of the best economy ever, etc.
Comment Posted By mrk On 11.08.2007 @ 22:03
Anyone interested in the truth of this should go to this website:
http://www.realclimate.org/
They've debunked pretty much all of this already. This is actually a blog run by climate scientists, volunteering their time. They are the real "citizen-scientists", along with people like Hansen who spoke out despite the Bush administration's attempts to keep him quiet. By this I mean they are real practicing climate scientists trying to help the public understand this, and are not ideologues or paid shills with ties to, say, the mining industry.
The extreme right and industries who devote substantial resources to defame climate researchers often bring up someone like this every now and then, one self-professed "contrarian" who hasn't published any actual research yet proudly proclaims every major scientific organization is involved in a massive conspiracy for some nefarious purpose. Usually the supposed motive makes no logical sense. For example why would climate scientists, who depend more than most on funding from governments and corporations and a high-tech economy want to see the economy collapse? Then however the real scientists point out how their talking points are complete BS (usually on web sites and science magazines and the like), however this is never similarly shown in the media. Thus a large segment of the public will continue to think there really is nothing to all this or that there really is a massive debate going on, with no solid evidence either way.
"And we, the lay public who know next to nothing about the many scientific disciplines that are engaged in climate study, must ourselves keep a more open mind in order to decide the right course of action for the future. If nothing else, McIntyre has shown once again that scientists are as fallible as the rest of us.
Perhaps the scientists themselves need to be reminded of that from time to time."
I also wish so-called skeptics like whoever wrote that would have a little more respect for real scientists and not blindly believe whoever comes saying (with no evidence) that there's a massive conspiracy by all the world's scientists to defraud the public. Do you have a solid background in atmospheric physics, have you completed a dissertation in climate science and done research in this field as a profession? I myself don't, which is why unless I had a very good reason, I don't blindly go around saying how the scientists must be wrong because they're telling me something I don't want to hear. In a very complex and technical field, for example brain surgery I'm not going to arrogantly think I know more than someone who's worked in it their entire careers.
In the end, I think anti-intellectualism and rhetoric will cause America to seriously decline unless more speak out against it. No one thinks scientists are infallible, and no real scientist will tell you they are or that science knows everything. That's just a typical right-wing strawman. The real problem now is the exact opposite, too many people don't care about facts, science, or history when it goes against what they want to believe, and get their information on things like global warming, energy issues, and evolution from people like Rush Limbaugh and O'Reilly, and actually think they're informed.
Comment Posted By mrk On 11.08.2007 @ 21:59
