It's easy to scoff at scientists because they release one study this week expounding the virtues of some idea or another, and within a week another study is released completly contradicting what was said the week before. So it's easy to scoff for the simply reason that none of them really know the answer. They're just airing theories and twisting figures.
The fact that the majority are endorsing global warming doesn't do anything for me either. Just because a mob takes an idea and run with it doesn't mean they're right. A good part of the UK, and indeed the world chose to spend the 1930's ignoring the words of Winston Churchill in the face of mounting facts, and we all know how wrong the mob was on that one.The "facts" are much less clear cut with regard to global warming. You can talk about unprecedented melting of the polar ice cap, and I can point you to a chart that would hardly call it dramatic or unprecedented. Debate remains on the subject because there are large quantities of conflicting evidence. The "pro" global warming side chooses to ignore considerable evidence that all this happened before. My favorite line in the news and weather report is "This is the highest high... or lowest low..... or largest snowfall recorded on record SINCE..... " you fill in the blank. Point is, it all happened before. The media, and a large swath of the general public today doesn't seem to have the attention span necessary to view climate in the span of hundreds of years, but prefers to view things in the here and now, for the soundbite and headline. That's not to say that we shouldn't make an effort to change, and reduce emmissions, and energy consumption. We should. But I don't see the panic that many seem to. Reduced emmissions and reduced energy consumption could be economically beneficial if it was done in the right way, and for the right reasons. However, when I look at something like the Kyoto protocol that we've adopted hook, line and sinker here in Canada, I just don't see what that will do for the environment, other than worsen the situation. When you have a system of carbon credits that can be traded and moved around to stall large emmitters from changing, and have made exemptions for developing nations like China, nothing more will happen than moving the emmissions around, and destroying the economies of any country that tries to comply. Move the rest of the manufacturing sector to China, where there are no environmental regulations. Compliance is cheap when you do it like that.... So, when the "scientists" are pushing Kyoto, I tend to get a little cynical. Rod
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