Originally Posted by
Wogsterca
All of the climate issues make one assumption, that without man's intervention the climate is a constant.
False. (This is a silly straw man arguement.)
Originally Posted by
Wogsterca
However scientific research has shown it to be considerably warmer and cooler at different times. Technically we are in an ice age, something that would have been easy to figure if you would have been out in the -15℃ we had here last night. The earth gets warmer and cooler on a roughly 40,000 year cycle, the last time we were at the coldest part of this cycle was roughly 10,000 years ago. This means we are actually on the warming side of the cycle, even if we hadn't discovered a way to control fire, even if we had never discovered oil, it would still be getting warmer, by small amounts we are seeing. Glaciers would still be retreating and animal life would still need to adapt to different conditions.
Whether or not you agree, there are two parts to the GW issue: 1) increasing temperatures, 2) why the temperatures are increasing.
Of course, temperatures change (
everybody knows that). There are two things,
crucial things, that are different now than any time before.
Do you know what they are? If you don't know what they are, then, if you disagree with GW or AGW, then
you don't know what you are arguing against!
Originally Posted by
Wogsterca
Having said all that though, when you take millions of tonnes of toxic waste and dump it into the air and water, there has to be a price to pay. I don't think on a grand scale we are paying that price yet, but future generations will, and the later part of the 20th century and early part of the 21st century will be know as the most selfish time period in mans history. I could say more, but I have to go catch a bus to work.
Yes, whether or not you agree with GW or AGW, there are other reasons not to use fuel at the rate we currently do. The motivation of the some of the "denialists" is to maintain the
status quo and arguing against GW is a method for doing that.
There are actually a few legitimate climate researchers who have issues with AGW. The problem is that most of the AGW denialist stuff is from people who don't know what they are talking about and have no real credibility in anything (WAPO publishing denialist nonsense from Palin is one of many examples). If one was a true skeptic, one would also look at the quality of the stuff produced by the denialist camp (which overall looks very
poor).