Steve,
A good place for an overview on this stuff is http://www.realclimate.org/
The arguments in the web link you provide have
been around, in varied forms, for some time, even
though they're regularly contextualized and
refuted. There's a nice literature on the
political strategy and forces driving the stuff
of the website you've posted here, a literature
that others on the list may wish to
illuminate. In my experience, the first best
entry point into much of this is realclimate.org
Mike Maniates
At 06:41 PM 7/2/2009, Steve Hoffman wrote:
Dear All
While discussing climate change with skeptics,
Ive been presented with the following article:
<http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=10fe77b0-802a-23ad-4df1-fc38ed4f85e3>http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=10fe77b0-802a-23ad-4df1-fc38ed4f85e3
Would love to know how those on this list would
respond, since I havent crunched the numbers myself.
That notwithstanding, my response would probably touch on the following:
a) For the record, to play the numbers
game for a moment, how many IPCC scientists are
in this group of 700? On the other hand, how
many IPCC scientists believe that climate change
is both a serious problem and human-caused?
b) Knowing what I do about Japan, I dont
put an enormous amount of stock in the statement
that 90% of participants in a Japan Geoscience
Union symposium didnt believe the IPCC report
the language barrier is large, and cultural
factors, e.g., what one might call cultural
push-back [reflex skepticism], as well as
follow the leader, and the particular nature
of this group, may be important here. Quite a
bit may have been lost in the translation, so to
speak in both directions. [Also, how many
participants were there at this
symposium?] Yet that is the lead fact in the article.
c) How many of the 700 are on the payroll of interested parties?
As an interdisciplinary environmental scientist
who does carry a healthy degree of skepticism w/
regard to scientific data of all kinds, I do
have a certain amount of sympathy with anyone
who professes to be skeptical. However, my
sense on climate change is that the scientific
consensus has become near-overwhelming, and
while politics are of course not 100% divorced
from this, the data are very compelling.
But again, Im most curious to know what sort of
response might come from folks on this list who
are much more well informed on this set of issues than I.
Best Regards,
--
Steven Hoffman, Ph.D.
Environmental Consulting and Innovation
Bow (Samish Island), WA
shoff...@hoffman-and-associates.com
(360) 720-4378
