Tuesday, April 7, 2009

After reviewing the two websites, I’ve come to the conclusion that global warming does indeed exist.
Supporting evidence (not proof, because, as Coby Beck reminds us, proof belongs to the domain of mathematics, not science):

The “friends of science” appear to know very little science. None of their claims about the “myths” of global warming are backed up by cited research. Also, and I quote, “Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is.” This kind of faulty logic is the kind of stuff I’ve seen while going through their website. Both gases, when released by mechanisms outside of the natural cycle, are pollutants. While the “friends of science” were trying to prove global warming wrong, they presented a graph used by “climate alarmists,” to show the strong trend upwards in global temperature over the last forty years. Using another graph (of the sine curve), the “friends of science” proved that the first graph could not possibly have a strong trend upwards if it was part of a normal cycle of events. In such a “normal cycle of events,” trends go up and down, and if one looks only at the immediate rate and recent past, he or she would be mistaken in thinking that trend is down or flat or rising, or whatever the normal cycle was doing at that point. But to assume that the trend of rising temperatures is part of a normal cycle of events is fallacious; to use your conclusion to support premises are, as even they remind us, illogical and ungrounded. On the other hand, if I were a climate change skeptic, and as my objections and “facts” started to crumble around me, as more and more evidence is added to the other side, I might have chosen to resort to invalid or inconsistent arguments too.

The other website was full of data, cited research, and compelling facts. Though it presents an idea that neither I nor anyone else (I don’t think) really want to exist, overwhelming evidence shows us that, yes, indeed global warming is happening. It is up to us to do what we can to face it and mitigate it, but first we have to accept it. I agree with my colleagues that it is a little childish—the name is rather condescending even. However, as Romm points out, scientists are not good at repeating the same thing over and over. Nor will they argue about things that have already been established. As much as I wish that people could be rational and accept scientific fact as such, it seems to me that is up to the rhetoricians of the world to convince it.

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