I am all in favor of reducing pollution. Just the global warming hyteria is a scam. You can't tell me it is warming or cooling. I give it a maybe. There also "maybe" be a volcano underneath dallas tx. That's the credit I'll give.

what about all the people who work at the power plant? Do their jobs matter?

http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/e...manbearpig.jpg

People on both sides kind of irritate me when these discussions come up. Same thing with evolution. 'I don't believe in global warming.' 'I believe in evolution.'

It's not about belief, it's about science, and science is not about belief. If you people are accredited scientists and you've studied the science, talk all you want. If you don't 'believe' in global warming 'and can prove it' because of what's going on in your backyard, just drop it, okay? People have to have an opinion on every damn thing in the world, whether they know anything about it or not.

My $.02.

Really? C'mon over and try to turn my lights off tough guy...

It's arrogant comments like this that serve to alienate. Environmentalism has become a religion, with fanatics and rabid wackos foaming at the mouth. I used to work as an engineer in the power industry on pollution controls for coal burning power plants. It was astonishing to see how much complete BS is spewed my these environmental nutcases who apparently have zero education or are speaking as experts with degrees in communications or some other liberal art basket weaving degree.

The current mathematical climate models require a huge leap of faith, as there is absolutely no way to validate their results. Basically it consists of a "scientist" saying "Hey, I've got this mathematical model that predicts this terrible thing happening. I have no way to validate it, but we must do something or TERRIBLE things will happen!!". When I was creating stress analysis models in engineering to predict stress failures on turbine engine components, I'd have my ass handing to me in a design review if I didn't have a way of validating my stress analysis (mathematical model) results. Yet with climate science, these guys skip the validation procedure, have a "peer review" by colleagues, and political policy is legislated on the unverified results. Sorry, but that is not how this should be done... Yes, we need to continue our work in green technology. But we need to do it for the right reasons, not some misguided effort lead by bunk science.

Fire Fighting
 

I use to be an airborne and front line wild land firefighter. A scientist once told us that each large fire that we suppressed or prevented in Alaska had the carbon equivalent of every car in the world for a year. And, we put down a lot of fires. I estimate that my carbon footprint is well into the negative due to my part in preventing forest fires.

Bedsides Why should we care about global change? The scientists keep talking about all the areas that will experience the negatives some places will have to improve. Canada and Minnesota might become a livable place in 50 years. :)

Skyhigh

I certainly don't deny there are wackjobs spouting off about environmental policy. I said as much in my post. These are some of the people that irritate me.

Again, are you a scientist? What do you know about mathematical climate models? This is a serious question, have you worked with the models, or studied them seriously? What kind of validation do you want to see? Is validation even a part of the scientific method in all cases?

Finally, you say 'we need to continue work on green technology for the right reasons.' Do the reasons really matter all that much? If you think we need to continue the work, doesn't it matter most that the work continue, not all the 'reasons' and infighting?

I did turn all the lights off...but not my TV, does that count?:rolleyes:

Whether it helps our planet or not...lets be positive...@least it helps my bill.:p

TI-

The world is filled with irritating people--I am probably one of them. The beauty of the first amendment is that speeches can be made by the brilliant, the stupid, the profane, whatever. Some of the speech is worthwhile, some of it is garbage--that is for you to decide.

I classify as garbage your notion that only scientists have worthwhile opinions on the subject of the environment and "global warming".

The Godddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is one of the 4 main organizations that plots and predicts global temperatures. As an aside, it is run by James Hansen, who is Robin to Al Gore's global warming Batman. GISS declared that last OCT had been a record year to year temperature change. Some non-scientists looked at the raw data and saw that GISS had used the same data set from Sept for Oct's numbers in all of north Asia. GISS (quietly) admitted the error.

Dr Hansen said just this past week that the democratic process was not working with respect to global warming--in other words he'd like people who disagree with him to shut up, but still cede to him their money and their liberty.

Scientists (like doctors) make mistakes, can be arrogant, and can be owned by their employers. They have a lot of specific knowledge and expertise, but they are not the only ones whose opinion matters.

WW

Well, I have a mechanical engineering degree, which means I took all the same physics, chemistry, mathematics, (calc 1,2,3, diff eq, prob & statistics) as "scientists" and have studied the scientific method. Does that make me a scientist? I have no freaking idea. But do I understand what some of these people are trying to pass on as science? Hell yes I do. Look man, I used to work on pollution controls in the power generation industry!

As far as what kind of validation I want to see, I'd like to see it period! In the engineering industry (whose underpinnings are in hard science) we (myself included) worked with mathematical models on a daily basis. As I said previously, if there was no validation for a mathematical model, there was no way ANYBODY was going to put faith in the results of what we came up with. How could they possibly do so??

You ask "Do the right reasons matter all that much?". The fact that people like you seriously ask a question like that scare me. What is the world coming to where people put up with this kind of reasoning? Wow.