On a list of essentially intelligent technically aware people, we seem to have hit a few raw nerves.
On 28/01/13 12:51 AM, ____ [1] wrote: On 27/01/2013 11:02 PM, ____ [1] wrote:
I am not cheerful, I am worried. Let's see how worried you are in 20 years time, perhaps 10 years.
At 23:25 27-01-2013, ____ [1] wrote: I put it to you that you are only worried about your extremest POV being ignored.! Your "chicken little" BS creates an extreme opposite and does not engender any form of understanding or real debate on the topic.
At 01:37 27-01-2013, ____ [1] wrote: ... but you are an attack dog, so we can expect nothing other than that from you.
Kind Regards [ ! ]
Ad hominem arguments do not advance a line of debate, merely serve to raise the temperature. Maybe due to the instigator's really not having a defensible position. - What's going on? One of the treasures of our civilisation, the scientific method [2], is being used to seek answers. A significant number of alert enquiring people are using this sharp tool. They have developed, after much open scrutiny and vigorous informed debate, models of climate for the small spec of matter we call Earth. These models are the result of the ongoing debate. A debate readily found in peer-reviewed journals, where each point is challenged and found to be sound. Any and all errors are actively sought out, because _that_is_ the nub of the scientific method. - What are we left with? A significant upset to the equilibrium of this small planet's climate, caused by the activities of the species homo sapiens. (How sapient remains to be seen.) The increase in energy within our biosphere, captured from the Sun, is leading to an increase in extreme weather events around the planet. There is NO proof that climate change is NOT happening. Actuaries for insurance companies are hard at work, coming up with new policy premiums, and exclusions. [Some risks are effectively uninsurable. An example in place for decades is nuclear fission. Flood (not deluge from "the heavens") is rapidly becoming another.] - What are we going to do about the situation? And when? This is the area of general public discussion. So, while argumentum ad hominem is always poor form, I consider it _very_ poor form, directed towards the OP, one of our number, whose family home was very much threatened by one of the fires here in Victoria, and depending upon the weather, may _still_ be so threatened. The same was true seven years ago, in 2005, and two years before that, in 2003. The family home has now been directly threatened by fires in three of the last eleven summers. An occurrence now likely [3] into the future, thanks to climate change. Andrea [1] Names removed, quoted simply for example. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method [3] I shall not enter into discussion of statistical proofs for this particular assertion, since I have more immediate pressing activities. Apologies for that.