[Xantar]

Originally Posted by Professor S

Sorry, sir. Sorry for implying you had a superiority complex. I'm obviously way off base...

You know, I've been thinking about just apologizing for the way I said what I said. And then I came back from work here to find you apparently insulting me in a passive-aggressive manner (ironic, given the circumstances). I don't want to sound resentful because in the end I'm really not bothered by it. But I hope this is just a case of me being oversensitive.

But anyway, never mind that. I'm sorry for my little moral superiority act. It wasn't my intention to act like an annoying prick. If it offended you, I'm sorry about that. I hope we can move on, and I hope it won't poison the rest of this discussion.

My argument never was that there is or isn't global warming global warming. My argument is that Al Gore is trying to turn theory into fact through repetition. He is trying to SILENCE dissent, which is never good in any case. I never said global warming isn't happening. I never posted anything that said it wasn't happening. In fact, the basis of this entire THREAD has nothing to do with whether or not global warming is happening.

The only arguments that I have put forth are those that believe that the subject is still worth discussing, which it is, and also point out possible alterior motives for this sudden push to silence critics. Thats it. Anything else you've read into them is your own creation.

I understand all that, but I think you're being disingenuous. Global warming is worth discussing, sure, but I'm not convinced that there really is much of a controversy in the scientific community about the basic tenets behind it.

Or let's just put it this way: Gore says that there is a general consensus in the scientific community on global warming. You say it's not settled and the science behind it isn't proven. To back yourself up, you've posted an article by Steven Milloy and a quote by an MIT professor. I've posted a link to a list of organizations and scientists on both sides of the debate, noting that the vast majority support the theory that global warming is happening and is caused by humans. So the question is whether we've been able to find reasonable opposition to the theory of global warming. If yes, then Gore is wrong and he's squelching a debate that should be happening. If no, then Gore is perhaps overzealous but not necessarily deceiving anybody when he says the debate is settled in the scientific community.

Which means the next question is whether Steven Milloy presents an at least reasonable argument against global warming. I thought he did at first, but the more I research the question, the more questions pop up in my head. And I don't mean stuff like, "I have some evidence which contradicts Milloy's evidence" or anything like that. For one thing, Milloy doesn't present any evidence. He has no citations. There's no way of knowing what his sources are for any particular claim or calculation and so unless you happen to be extremely familiar with the scientific literature (and I'm not), it's very difficult to verify anything he says. That might be enough to disqualify him right there, but just to be thorough I tried to figure out where he's getting some of his data. In one instance, I think I caught him in a basic math error (I have to double-check). What's more damning is that at one point he criticizes a trend line in a report but neglects to mention that this trend line was presented as the most extreme case in the report and that another trend line, which Milloy doesn't mention, was presented as the most likely scenario. That kind of selective quoting just isn't allowable in scientific debate.

I don't want to go around accusing people of being deceptive, but I've found myself coming to the conclusion that Milloy's article and the arguments contained within would not pass muster in a peer-reviewed journal. It certainly looks the part, but in the end it may simply be muddying the waters by raising doubts that shouldn't even be seriously considered (and that's no good for science either). I'll try to present what I've got tomorrow (couldn't get it done tonight). If I'm right, then Steven Milloy's article shouldn't be considered a serious rebuttal of global warming.

Here's what I'm driving at: if Steven Milloy is out, then as far as I know the only other reasonable opposition to the basic tenets of global warming comes from about a dozen individual scientists including Alfred Sloane (by the way, it appears that Sloane's research mostly involves the effect of volcanic activity on the atmosphere. That's well and good, but it's a different field of study than the effect of carbon emissions on the atmosphere). And if that's all true, then Gore is within his rights to say that the debate is largely settled in the scientific community because as smart as those dozen individuals may be, hundreds of their equally smart peers are agreed on the issue. And it's also fair for Gore to say that there's enough evidence for us to act on it instead of continuing to wait and debate some more. Now, if Gore is saying (verbatim) that every person who argues against global warming must be a corporate shill, then obviously that's taking things too far, and I'm not going to try to defend it. On the other hand, given what I think I've found about Steven Milloy, maybe a little paranoia is understandable.

Edit: Actually, I should have said that Steven Milloy has very few citations. He links to other web pages every once in a while and he sometimes names the scientist in some study or other, but without a bibliography of some sort, it's hard to dig up the actual article he's referring to.