[Order] Do you have a right to your own opinion?

[hypatias mom]

There is a real, quantitative difference between warning about a hurricane, an crashing plane, etc., and the current fuss over a bit of CO2. I think it ridiculous that people are actually believing the hype. The air is far cleaner in many places than it has been in many years, and emissions are at extremely low levels. You weren't around in the days of the true gas guzzlers, sulfur dioxide in the air, coal fires, and open smokestacks. The air was often so foul it killed people in foggy weather and temperature inversions. I can't see the current situation meriting the angst. I'm sorry, it just isn't logical. Come some day and show me where I am wrong. The situation doesn't fit the scare tactics.

[Neike Taika-Tessaro]

The fuss about CO2 is that you don't see it and you don't smell it, and the quantities of it needed to affect the weather are miniscule compared to the quantities of it that would be needed to even begin to affect your breathing. Soot, grime, and the whole lot, is the global dimming issue, and beyond that, that's also the type of stuff that affects your health directly. In other words, CO2 is not going to factor in what you subjectively will call "cleaner", either in favour or disfavour thereof.

However, and here's the crux of the issue, your health != the weather. In other words, it's important to realise that what is a pollutant to the climate of the earth may not have any (direct) effect on human health at all.

[hypatias mom]

And yet, a couple of volcanoes will put out a lot more CO2 than humans can, and there is nothing man can do about that. And the sun's output changes also. Which can cause more immediate trouble: volcanoes and sunbursts, or an incandescent bulb? Honestly!!

[Neike Taika-Tessaro]

And yet, a couple of volcanoes will put out a lot more CO2 than humans can,

Are you certain of that? BTW, in case this isn't clear, this is an honest question, not just a rhethorical jab.

Which can cause more immediate trouble: volcanoes and sunbursts, or an incandescent bulb? Honestly!!

Let me alter your question slightly. Which can cause more immediate trouble: volcanoes and sunbursts, occurring every once in a while; or half a billion incandescent bulbs, alight simultaneously and (in that number, if not in that identity) constantly? :-P Your answer might still be the same, of course, and I reckon it would be, but given it's not just lightbulbs, I think the answer is far harder to give and be sure about. Honestly!

Also, ask yourself what makes the CO2 of volcanoes have more (or less) impact - the amount that can be absorbed by plantlife. Hey, wait a minute, aren't we destroying a lot of the plantlife? Gasp, I guess we are!

[Neike Taika-Tessaro]

For perspective, by the way, I want to note that I loved this and think it wins an internet:

Burning at the stake releases greenhouse gases.

[hypatias mom]

Actually, yes, it does.

[Neike Taika-Tessaro]

What does what?

[Chrimigules]

Plus a lot of emissions are now overseas. Sure, America and Europe is getting cleaner, but what about China and India? Didn't China recently outperform the U.S. in terms of emissions?

[Yvain Wintersong]

I've made a separate thread about maybe a better way of solving the global warming question. Please check it out. Since it's very different from what we're doing here, I'll keep discussing things here too.

If I'm understanding your post about cleaner air right, you're saying you think there's less CO2 now than there was a while ago? Things look much cleaner to me too, but this is one of the reasons I'm so finicky about checking scientific data instead of going by intuition. See, for example, this graph. As Chrimiguels says, a lot of it's probably China's fault.

And yet, a couple of volcanoes will put out a lot more CO2 than humans can, and there is nothing man can do about that. And the sun's output changes also. Which can cause more immediate trouble: volcanoes and sunbursts, or an incandescent bulb? Honestly!!

Let me try an analogy.

A pipe in your house is broken. If no one fixes it, it will flood your house, causing thousands of dollars in damage to the walls and carpeting. I'm a plumber. You call me and ask me to fix the pipe. I respond:

"And yet, a tsunami can put out a lot more water than one leaky pipe, and there's nothing you can do about that! And thunderstorms also cause flash floods. Which can cause more immediate trouble, tsunamis and flash floods, or one leaky pipe? Honestly!!"

Yes, there are many sources of CO2 potentially much worse than manmade CO2. Volcanoes can (and once every few hundred thousand years, do) put out enough CO2 to kill a good chunk of life on Earth. If that happens, we're pretty much doomed. Likewise, the heat we get from the sun varies in Milankovich cycles; luckily for us, we're at a point in the Milankovich cycle that's neither an ice age or a hothouse. If that changes, we're also doomed. But since neither of those are happening right now, we might as well address the much smaller problem that is happening right now, that's still big enough to kill millions of people - human-caused global warming.

(Not sure if this is relevant, but if volcanoes or solar cycles were changing CO2, we'd probably know. Scientists measure solar intensity and can roughly calculate the output of major volcanic eruptions. I think.)

[Jacobus Loki]

But the Global dimming phenomenon has to be considered. Maybe global warming is saving us from global dimming throwing us into an Ice Age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

[Jacobus Loki]

The situation doesn't fit the scare tactics.

No, it doesn't. But since the end of the Cold War, the Powers need something to scare the willies out of us, and if they can make us feel guilty in the bargain, so much the better.

Al Qaida isn't scary enough.

Hey, remember when Nuclear Winter was going to freeze us to death? After the Gulf War, when Saddam set fire to massive number of wells, some scientists were measuring like crazy trying to "prove" nuclear winter.

nada. zilch.

Hey, if Bird Flu or an asteroid hits, global warming will be as forgotten as the old theory that a vaccuum could not exist in space, and that it was full of aether.

[Yvain Wintersong]

Jacobus, your argument seems to be that we should not trust scientists' predictions of bad things happening from global warming, because we should generally never trust anyone who says very bad things are going to happen.

But obviously, very bad things sometimes do happen. I've already mentioned that several historical disasters killed off large fractions of the human race. And as I've mentioned, those very bad things are sometimes human caused, as with the collapse of the Mayans. So if we know very bad things sometimes happen, and lots of very smart people are predicting that a very bad thing will happen soon, why should we always just ignore them?

Some people said bird flu would be catastrophic, and they were wrong and looked silly. Other people said SARS would be catastrophic, and they were wrong and looked silly. Other people said Spanish flu would be catastrophic, and it killed a hundred million people. Still want to always ignore predictions of catastrophic things?

As far as I see it, scientists have a phenomenal record of making correct predictions, including predictions about bad things. Engineers and climate scientists warned that a big hurricane could destroy New Orleans; people dismissed that as scare tactics and doom-saying, and then it did. Economists predicted that the housing bubble would collapse; people dismissed that as fear-mongering, and of course it did collapse and now lots of people are without homes. Ecologists have been warning for decades that overfishing would destroy fisheries; people accused them of being needlessly catastrophic, and then several major world fisheries collapsed. And during the Gulf War, some scientists said there would be a limited nuclear winter that would lower temperatures in the Gulf, and there was - temperatures in the Gulf area decreased several degrees and farming was adversely affected. There's never been a real nuclear winter because there's never been a real nuclear war.

Of course, scientists are wrong sometimes. The great thing about science is that they're wrong because there was information they didn't understand, and when they find out they've been wrong, they update their calculations to account for it. As time goes on, they become more and more right. Nowadays, there's still a possibility any particular scientific consensus prediction is wrong, but you wouldn't want to BET on it.

If you believe science works, then you should believe that dispassionate scientists working for truth ought to be right a decent percentage of the time. If you call something mocking phrases like "scare tactics" and "doomsaying", you can successfully convince your fellow humans not to believe in it. But that doesn't work on reality - either something's true or it isn't, regardless of how well you can mock the people who believe it.

[Chrimigules]

I'll assume the position that people don't has a right to their own opinion because People b. Lest we forget, there are people running around that think the Earth is six thousand years old.

[hypatias mom]

Actually, I think people will think what they choose to think, right or wrong. I also think some of them should not be allowed out without a keeper.

[Andreas the Wise]

Maybe a better direction for this discussion - do Cedrist gods have the right to their own opinion in the (now blessedly resolved) Kaisership debate ...

[Chrimigules]

Well, they obviously know what's going down.

[Liam conToketi]

Unfortunately, their messages have to be passed through Acolytes and Priests who have their own agendas...

[Chrimigules]

Surely that can't be true!

[Jacobus Loki]

Yup.

Loki came to me in a dream. I'll tell the story in the Shrine of Controversy as part of my UNofficial sour grapes, carping & moaning thread.

[Jess]

Great, I love stories