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In Reply to: Victor, you positively make me laugh!!! posted by EBerlin on June 17, 2006 at 07:01:16:
You have an apparently knowlegeable guy, a specialist in his field, a climatologist, and you, instead of learing something from him, simply declare him incompetent - while you yourself don't seem to know first thing about that subject.Your best defense in this question - dumping it on me... figures, as you have nothing else to state.
I say - drop your silly prejudices and spend some time talking with him. It is likely you will abandon the childish "he knows it all" and simply realize he knows a few things about his field of expertize.
Our problem today is too many people with your mindset. Knowing exactly zero about this field, they don't have any problems putting forward very forceful positions - just read this thread. Any doubts regarding their knowledge are met with ridicule, and you are doing in that department just great.
When you learn perhaps 1% about that field what your FIL does, then perhaps your views will be taken seriously too. Until then, with Al Gore as your source, I would be more willing to talk with your FIL than with ten people here.
As far as your presentation of your FIL personal life... I think you should rethink posting such stuff here, as it surely does not present YOU in any good light - how exactly does it make you look I will not state, but I think you get my tilt.
If your intent was to thusly present all anti-GW climatologists as bad people, this would be just ridiculous, but speaking badly of someone who is not here to defend himself is at best ungentlemanly.
Follow Ups:
Well it's not my intention to brand all anti-GW climatologists as bad people. I just find it amusing that this particular intellectually dubious guy espouses it (actually we maybe see him every few years and I've no clue what his current thinking is; nor do I care).I've not actually expressed my own opinion on the matter. My position is essentially a version of Pascal's Gambit. Knowing that there are strong opinions on both sides it appears the risks of ignoring the concern are infinitely greater than the inverse. So I go with a position of caution and of careful stewardship of nature.
Although I can't offer scientific proof of it I'm sure the earth's resources are not infinite, and I am not inclined to the position that the earth has a limitless power to heal itself. I do know that factory farming, for example, has a tremendously pernicious effect on the natural world, and I'm quite sure that agribusinesspeople ignore these devastating effects from a position of self-interest. I take this as a representative example of human behavior that I extrapolate and assume exists in other forms.
The problem with that Pascal's position, while reasonable on surface, is that one gets blown around like a dry leaf, lacking critical mass to analyze and select the issues of concern.There are all kinds of alarmists around, and if one were to apply that logic to all of them all life on Earth would have to stop - there would be no air travel, no nuclear power, no agriculture and who knows what else. My FIL is that sort of a person, and you should see him fight any home improvement idea his wife had over the years.
Pretty much ALL human activity involves risk/benefit analysis, and if manking always went with limiting risks, we would still be living in caves.
No one is suggesting limitless power to heal, but we also have evidence of Earth surviving many things on the way to today... ironically, though, that doesn't mean a particular form of life is guaranteed to. We have our wishes, and then there are cosmic realities - it the Earth is destined to become 20 degrees hotter, killing all human life, due to hotter Sun, for instance, then there is nothing we could do to avoid that.
Limited resources is an entirely different category.
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But of course being the biggest hypocrite on this board you would never notice mean vindictiveness in that guy's post... but the message hurts? Learn to take it like a man.
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