I’ve been hesitant to pick sides on the Global Warming topic. Here is some interesting reading in a recent Scott Adams blog post on the subject:
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/climate_change/?CmtOrder=Rating
I’m curious how many of you simultaneously hold the following two nearly-contradictory opinions:
1. Climate change is real because scientists say so.
2. Experts have never accurately predicted anything so complicated.
Even more interesting is some of the comments:
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I hate the way this debate always gets framed, on both sides of the issue. Yes, it’s true that most scientists agree that the climate is changing due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. But that question is almost irrelevant. The important questions are:
1) How much of the change is due to CO2 vs other factors?
2) How bad will this really be?
3) If there’s a possibility of this being really bad, what is the cost/benefit of different options of dealing with the problem?
The debate has focused so much on the question of whether climate change exists that on one side you have idiots claiming that it’s a myth, and on the other side you have idiots claiming that because 97% of scientists agree that it exists we must implement policy X to curb carbon emissions, with no consideration of the cost vs benefit of that course of action.
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Saying most scientists believe in global warming is meaningless, since it ignores the wide range of anticipated changes that might occur. Part of the view of many “skeptics” is not that global warming does not exist, but that many of the dire scenarios are overblown or at least unknowable with current information. Coming to a realistic conclusion about the path of climate change would be more helpful than picking binary sides and sniping.
Rather than striving for a monolithic consensus on any issue, “experts” should be willing, able & indeed eager to challenge their own beliefs again and again to try to get closer (and possibly never) to the truth.
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see also: http://blog.briangallimore.com/2012/05/technology-economics-psychology/
and http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
I agree with both statements, but I don’t think they are contradictory. Its true climate change is real, its been documented by geologists for a hundred years. And its also true experts have never accurately predicted anything so complicated. I don’t see the contradiction.
Now if you meant ‘Anthropogenic climate change is real because scientists say so’, well I don’t agree with that statement, but I still agrre with the second.