Several years ago, I watched a news report of a meeting between Arab and Israeli leaders who each made statements to each other (and to the news media) which were not direct responses to the statement or statements just made by the other party. One of the news commentators called it a "dialogue of the deaf." And that's what this thread looks like to me.
Ann, I have not read anyone in this thread who has said that reducing pollution is a bad idea. Yet that's what you seem to read when someone writes that reversing global warming and reducing CO2 in the atmosphere isn't necessarily required for humanity's long-term survival. CO2 isn't a pollutant in our atmosphere, it's a necessary component. The atmospheres of Venus and Mars aren't like that of Earth, and probably never were, due to differences in water levels and distance from the sun and lesser gravity and different amounts of heavy minerals and so forth. Comparing them to Earth isn't valid and simply clouds the discussion.
This page is a brief index of sites which claim to refute the central claims of the dangers of global warming. The authors of the various texts claim to be qualified to speak on the subject, so we probably should at least read what they have to say.
And while I haven't done so, any of us could find a similar site which lists various articles from equally qualified people taking the opposite viewpoint.
I wonder what people would have said in the 1850's had such a furor been made of the warming trend which began then and has continued until this day. Or the cooling trend which began in earnest around 1270 AD and froze out the Viking settlements in Greenland and destroyed the vineyards of southern England. Or 1816, the "year without a summer," when New England farms froze under June blizzards and food crops failed throughout Europe due to the 1815 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tamboro.
Earth's weather is changeable. Earth's climate is also changeable. Temperatures have fluctuated for thousands of years, but this is the first time humans have been specifically blamed for it. I do not deny that humanity has had an impact on our weather, but I remain skeptical that we are dooming ourselves.
How many of you remember the famous "hockey stick" temperature graph in the 2001 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Here's just
one site which pronounces it dead. Of course, there are others which support the hockey stick conclusions, but the graph's absence from the same organization's most recent report on global warming (which still supports the human-induced warming position) makes me doubt its validity. Yet there are many in the media who still refer to this graph and present it as fact.
Is the earth getting warmer? It has been, but not for the past few years. Is the climate changing? Could be. For example, the southeastern US has been in the grip of a pronounced drought for several years. The central US (Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas) had a similar drought broken in 2007 with record rainfall, and central Oklahoma has just completed the wettest August on record. The water tables in all three states, which were way below normal at the end of 2006, are at or above optimum levels now.
But these data points by themselves aren't evidence of anything except recent plenteous rainfall. They're anecdotes. Pictures of smoke or exhaust or even pollution aren't evidence, either, unless you're building a case for the violation of some local pollution ordinance. There is no consensus among scientists over the cause, effect, speed, or result of higher temperatures. Who knows, maybe the temperature will rise enough to enlarge the sub-tropical croplands around the world and enable us to feed the hungry. Maybe the warmer temperatures will stimulate the growth of food algae in the ocean and enable the sea-dwelling animals to flourish all up and down the food chain. And maybe we'll all die gasping for oxygen.
My point is that we don't know. And the counter-measures which have been proposed either won't solve the "problem" because they aren't effective enough or they won't help because they would bankrupt every country in the world. And I know that no one will change his or her mind as a result of reading this post - or even as a result of reading this entire thread. I only hope we can keep the discussion civil and reasonable.
