Originally Posted by
stratoduck
fred, have you read the report from James inhofe? Only a handfull of climatologists were listed in his report, and only a fraction of the 700 scientists were listed at all. the references were mostly from right wing organizations, bloggers, and the report itself.
i was unable to locate the list of 700. And nowhere in the report did it list how many climatologists believe that human intervention is warming the planet versus those who don't.
still looking for that statistic of 2/3s of scientists don't believe in global warming.
Disclaimer: I don't have a firm opinion either way on global warming due to lack of information.
I have a very close relative who is a well-known professor in a technical field. The general consensus in technical academia is that there is no RELIABLE data to prove global warming. There is a high level of concern that we are going off half-cocked. There several reasons for this...
1. A tremendous amount of politically tainted money is being thrown at this problem. People in the fields who benefit from this windfall don't have much incentive to disprove climate change. If they can't prove it outright, they can at least drag things out to keep the grant money rolling.
2. The technical aspects of this issue are monumentally complex...there are no guarantees that we are even aware of all the major factors yet, much less how they all inter-react. You can make a career out of muddling around in climate science, and many do.
3. There are naturally occurring global climate cycles, even really bad ones (ice age). If things are in fact changing, what role do natural cycles play?
Certain political factions have already formally declared global warming as truth, since it is anathema to everything they hate...oil, military, aviation, industry, population growth, etc. It's basically a cure-all political lever.
Like I said, I think the juries still out. Don't rush to buy into this just yet...follow the money and power trails, and retain a healthy skepticism.