Bottom line on climate change debate...

[misanthrope]

...If we (environmentalists) are wrong, some folks are inconvenienced and others lose financial opportunities. If they (climate change deniers) are wrong, the ecosphere is threatened and a huge swath of the life on Earth dies along with humanity.

Now tell me again, who is really erring on the side of "conservative" thought and action?

[Avalux]

1. But but....

the US has enough natural gas reserves to last the next 50 years!!!!

(that's what we're up against).

I agree with you - environmentalists are the conservatives.

[rucky]

2. I'm pretty sure they created a hedge fund that covers this. n/t

[GMA]

3. I hate this argument where one has to be on one "side" or another.

There is a lot of ground between the two poles. But that's just me. I must be a moderate...

[notesdev]

4. Wow what terrible logic

So if I assert there's a giant space dragon hiding behind the sun*, who will only be appeased if we coat the moon in peanut butter, otherwise he'll eat the planet... are you going to rush to the Cape Canaveral with a jar of Skippy?


(Pay no attention to my massive investment in peanut futures)




* an assertion for which there is just as much actual, non-fabricated data to support it as there is for the nonsensical fraud that human activity is causing global warming

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. You seem to have a rather limited understanding of the science involved.

Which is quite simple. Massive amounts of carbon trapped in fossil fuels. Fossil fuels recovered and combusted, thus creating carbon dioxide which is released into the atmosphere (and is a greenhouse gas, oddly enough). The evidence of ice cores and other empirical analyses of CO2 levels in previous epochs indicates that the rise in atmospheric CO2 over the past century is totally out of line with any previous observed rise. There are also well-=observed temperature disturbances outside the scale of anything previously observed (melting ice sheets and glaciers, for instance). It is nothing more than simple logic to make the connection between massive quantities of greenhouse gases released by human activity and the observed temperature rise. You havent much room to talk about terrible logic, since your position seems to be devoid of any.

[Johonny]

11. He's simply trying to use the logic of Pascals wager

He understands the concept but he doesn't understand the application.

[endless october]

5. won't make much difference....

unless you convince China.



good luck.

i don't mean to imply that they won't sign copenhagen. they'll sign it and ignore it, just like they ignore human rights.

[dysfunctional press]

6. it's too late to make a difference- so why bother with it at this point?

eat, drink, and be merry, for sometime this century- we die. :woohoo:

[misanthrope]

7. That's close to my perspective...

...While I believe there are a minority among humanity who understand, I think the vast majority are far too myopic to counteract. Self-destruction is too much a part of our nature.

[dysfunctional press]

8. i've pretty much stopped fretting about global climate change completely...

why worry about something that's inevitable.
people simply AREN'T going to even consider changing their ways until the truly catastrophic stuff starts happening. to them.

i'm just living like always, and looking forward to the news coverage of future cataclysms. hopefully it'll be in 3D- THAT would be WAY cool!

[Johonny]

10. others lose financial opportunities

actually the whole debate is generally being framed now, that financial opportunities are being lost now by those waiting to invest in alternative energies. The future energy supply will be owned by those countries that develop them not those burning fossil fuel.

Also you don't have to consider yourself an "environmentalist" to be a climate scientist and believe in the most current climate science information.