Re: Three Gorges Dam
Posted by heartland chris on January 28, 2008 at 07:59:53:

I'll second Canie's "We also stay away from such overly zealous religious subjects in this forum.". But, I found some of the science content that you posted to be interesting, some of it is probably correct, some of it is partially correct, and some of it is just wrong. The problem is that a lot of it is wrong and needs to be corrected. I need to work this morning but will take a shot at some corrections later; Canie already commented on some, and maybe some of the others will comment on other parts. One of the things that concern me about the USA is how the population, scientists and non-scientists, evaluate information. I am a research scientist and we are encouraged to do "public outreach". We should encourage non-scientists who are interested in science but try and steer them towards the facts/sientific consensus etc. We could get in some interesting discussions here if you are open minded and willing to back off from ideas that just don't make sense.

This reminds me of the debate within the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. These are earth scientists, probably many with Master's degrees, some with Ph.Ds. But, some large proportion don't believe that man is significantly altering climate. Some on this page don't believe it either. I'm a member of American Geophysical Union. Most of the climate scientists are AGU members, almost all (99%?) of "real" climate scientists agree that man is causing serious climate change and that it is likely it will get severe within this century. AGU took official positions on climate change/global warming 5 or 10 years ago...while AAPG gave it "Journalism" award to Michael Crichton for 2 fiction novels, one of which said global warming was a hoax.
Just last month, I was standing near a climate-related poster at the AGU national meeting that I am a co-author on. Jim Kennett, another co-author of the poster, was talking to someone else nearby. Jim is in the National Academy of Science. He has come up with some of the best evidence for sudden climate change from a 200 m core in Santa Barbara Basin (California): showed same patterns as Greenland Ice core. A Ph.D geologist or geophysicist that I know came by and he did not even believe that CO2 had anything to do with earth's temperature. This is kind of stunning, but I don't know how to debate this...all I could say is that 99% of climate scientists, many who were at the meeting, were the people who have determined that there is a problem, and the CO2/greenhouse effect has been understood for centuries. I can explain that CO2 and methane absorb outgoing infra-red radiation but don't know how something that is 0.4% of earth's atmosphere has such a strong affect...it just does.

"tremors", not "trimmers"
Chris


Follow Ups:
     ● Re: Three Gorges Dam - gary  11:27:35 - 2/6/2008  (73276)  (1)
        ● Re: Three Gorges Dam - Canie  19:44:55 - 2/10/2008  (73298)  (0)
     ● Re: Three Gorges Dam - Skywise  21:51:44 - 1/28/2008  (73209)  (0)