Posted: Jul 15, 2010 2:51 am
Leonidas wrote:There are parallels but I see different ones:
Deniers of evolution prefer to 'believe' (or with evolution disbelieve) because to them it is emotionally more satisfying than looking at and trying to understand the mass of evidence. We also have massive evidence to show that the world has warmed and cooled many many times in the past and most likely therefore will do so in future. The fossil record proves both evolution and climate change.
Similarly some of those who recognise that warming and cooling have taken place also insist that it can no longer be a natural process. It must be caused by mankind. This makes as much sense as insisting that after billions of years the evolution of the natural world has come under human control and natural processes have stopped.
The same natural processes that warmed and cooled many times before do still operate today. That is emotionally unsatisfying for some people but it is nevertheless the truth. Emotionally it is more satisfying to believe that somebody up there is looking after us or that we can control the weather by sacrificing goats, buying carbon credits or paying pots of money to fatty Gore to make another speech.
One of the standard fallacies of the global-warming deniers: "It's been this warm before." What is almost certainly coming in the next few decades has not been seen since there were human beings on the earth. If the people who have spent decades studying this problem, people who actually know something about climatology, say that there is something different this time, it would behoove those of us who aren't climatologists to listen to them.
They aren't an infallible oracle or the Pope declaring what the faithful must believe, but they are by far the best advice we are going to get. It's idiotic not to take heed to what they are saying. To glibly dismiss what they are saying because we know of natural cycles, to dogmatically assert that human beings cannot be affecting the climate (this by a person who gives no evidence of knowing the difference between climate and weather) is a way to plunge headlong into disaster.