Science under fire from 'merchants of doubt'

[Jack Flash]

Science under fire from 'merchants of doubt' according to historian
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-sci ... orian.html

[mugley]

Equally threatening are those who brandish false certainty when the jury is still out, setting themselves and their alleged science up for a fall.
The science is never "settled."

30 years ago it was another ice age coming, most of the solutions proposed to global warming don't really change overall world limits, just gives credits that can be sold to allow countries to do as they wish, not to mention with the shaky economies that countries now have, implementing a lot of changes that would make most things more expensive would wreak havoc on the world,

science also shows that the world historically goes thru temperature cycles, it has not proven that man has dramatically changed anything, all theory right now, but yet according to that article there is something wrong with me if I don't blindly take what they say and go into a full scale panic

I always thought science prided itself on only going on cold hard facts and things that could be proven, not speculation or taking things on faith

[Jack Flash]

If you are referring to carbon credits then yes I agree, that seems to be a scheme cooked up by speculators and their political cronies. Nefarious actions by political crooks shouldn't override good science - but it does. A lot of the headlines focus on this really bad idea.

As far as I can tell from the data for solar ( http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... rediction/ ) and climatological cycles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_oscillation and http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... st20oct_1/ ) , we should be heading for another mini Ice Age. I do remember the concerns from 30 years ago even though I'm a whole lot younger than you. Hey it's just science!

What is pretty solid science is that ice cores have shown that more CO2 in the atmosphere is associated with warmer times.

All things being equal, a higher CO2 count will cause higher temperatures because of the greenhouse effect. But all things are not equal and by sheer luck we may be countering the effects of a mini Ice Age. Who knows? Since earth is not a static model this is where the speculative part of the argument comes into play.

Aside from the temperature dilemma there is a pH dilemma for the oceans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification Research has found that corals, microorganisms, and shellfish experience reduced calcification when exposed to elevated CO2. This has a lot more solid science behind it, a much more predictive cycle, and could be a lot more devastating for humanity.

Anyway being the liberal thinker that I am, I propose that we develop nuclear alternatives, thorium reactors in particular ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium and http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampent ... -possibly/ )

I look at it this way if we're heading for a mini Ice Age, Nuclear fuel will heat our homes.
But if we are heading for a major warming event, Nuclear fuel will run the air-conditioners.
Building Thorium reactors will greatly reduce the Nuclear fuel disposal problem.
Building Thorium reactors will allow us to take aging, less safe Uranium reactors off line.
Building reactors will boost our economy the way building the Hoover dam helped in the depression.

...and they will do all this with out increasing greenhouse gasses or adding to the acidification of our oceans.

[mugley]

Carbon credits is what I was referring to, I realize things are changing in the climate, I just don't think that it has anywhere close to being proven how much if any man has affected it, how much we could change or stop, but yet lots of people want whole sale changes based on slim evidence while completely disregarding the effect those changes will have on people barely getting by now. I would guarantee that money is driving both sides of this

My main objection to the article was the attitude, "if you don't believe as I do, you're an idiot or don't care", unfortunately that attitude is to prevalent in most discussions these days.

BTW I agree nuclear power is the way to go

[Jack Flash]

Astronauts condemn NASA’s global warming endorsement - http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/ ... ndemn-nasa ’s-global-warming-endorsement/469366