SierraQ wrote:I'm so tired of the constant "I'm right and you are an idiot" mentality that infests both sides of this debate that I tend to avoid it. (Well, not this time, I suppose.) So rather than comment on the issues I'd like to comment on the debate itself.
First, SierraQ, Can you please provide a link to anyone on/in either the science camp or the environmentalist camp (the folks using science info to recommend policy) that is calling anyone an idiot? Thanks!
SierraQ wrote:I don't think you can divide the entire world into "believers" and "deniers."
I agree with you 100%!
SierraQ wrote:The middle is often drowned out from all the screaming and propaganda from the extremists on both sides so the average person does not know who the believe.
Ahh crap.

Here's the problem I have with this: In science there is no - zero - room for 'belief.' Gravity isn't keeping you in your chair as you read this because you or anyone else believes in gravity. Nuclear engineers don't design reactor vessels based on belief. The International Space Station isn't being held in low Earth orbit by belief. And back in the mid 1800s when chemists were taking the atmosphere apart they didn't discover CO2 because of belief.
SierraQ wrote:The driving thought behind the extreme "believers" is that if they are right we are effectively killing the planet and ourselves along with it, and that is obviously bad so something must be done. They point to the few decades of data we have gathered, plot a trend, correlate that with human activity, and draw a conclusion. The conclusion is correct, based on that data, and they are very angry that people are not listening.
Sorry - this is incorrect. Nobody worth reading is saying we're killing the planet. The planet will be fine. What we're doing is helping move the planet to a climate in which Homo sapiens sapiens has never survived. As for data and a 'few decades' - satellite observations go back to the 1950s. The function of greenhouse gases goes back to the 1850s. And there are samples of the Earth's atmosphere trapped in bubbles in the planet's ice that let us look back more than 110,000 years.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Featur ... _IceCores/
This, sorry to say, makes the rest of this post irrelevant and misinformed, at least. Sorry.
SierraQ wrote:Both viewpoints are fair and worthy of consideration; reality is probably somewhere in the middle as usual. I just wish we could jettison the extremists who control this debate and the other 99% of us could get together and figure out what we want to do.
So no - absolutely not. There is no 'debate' within the scientific community on that fact that human beings are drastically accelerating planetary warming. The debate - and the illusion of the need for 'another side' - are manufactured by a very small group of people that are paid by or supported by the fossil fuel industry. They are most of the same people that tried to create debate on acid rain, the danger of smoking tobacco, the polar ozone hole, the need for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and climate change. The simple fact that you and others believe there is a debate, believe there is 'another side' and believe science is either extremist, activist, or has holes in the climatic data chain of custody proves that the denial industry is winning.
Congratulations.