Quote:
Originally Posted by Wes Tausend
You're not the only one to think he's "on to something". About 90 percent of the worlds mainstream rational scientists recognize that the climate is not only seriously changing, but that humans still are (or have been) encouraging it to happen.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by bomelia
Wes, post your source.
Mike
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Mike,
Sorry for the delay but I just got back from hauling another 32,376,000 pounds of soot ...er ...I mean coal, eastward towards powerplants. ....Hope it doesn't quit before I'm retired.
This is a bit embarrassing but I can't find my exact source. I believe I did hear or read it because the 90% figure stuck with me. I thought it was in a documentary called " Global Warming: What you need to know ", that was produced by NBC for the Discovery Channel in 2006. It was narrated by Tom Brokaw. One of my DVD recorders recently copied the re-aired 90 minute segment from the Science Channel. A quick disc scan didn't find it and, where I thought it was, Brokaw merely stated "...the vast majority of scientists...", unless I missed it in my hurry.
Wherever I think I saw or heard, the 90% figure may be from a similar source such as this:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...climate_change )
...which says in part, "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
Main article: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report. According to this summary, the Fourth Assessment Report finds that human actions are "very likely" the cause of global warming, meaning a 90% or greater probability.[2] ". Not quite the same.
I don't personally think the 90% figure I stated is too far off ...and I did hedge it by including the biased words "
rational scientists" ...but 90% is impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt without an extensive poll of scientists that everyone agrees is accurate. That isn't going to happen soon!
My full original paragraph that you quoted above reads:
'You're not the only one to think he's "on to something". About 90 percent of the worlds mainstream rational scientists recognize that the climate is not only seriously changing, but that humans still are (or have been) encouraging it to happen.
Even G.W. has changed his tune short of just coming out and saying, "My God, they were right!" '
On the last sentence, a more trusted brief reference for this particular forum might be G.W. himself:
...From the White house Office of the Press Secretary June 11, 2001, it reads, in part,:
"My Cabinet-level working group has met regularly for the last 10 weeks to review the most recent, most accurate, and most comprehensive science. They have heard from scientists offering a wide spectrum of views. They have reviewed the facts, and they have listened to many theories and suppositions. The working group asked the highly-respected National Academy of Sciences to provide us the most up-to-date information about what is known and about what is not known on the science of climate change." Entire press release brief page at the link:
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0010611-2.html )
Nothing, as G.W. says, including Global Warming, is certain. But there is very strong accumulated circumstancial evidence that "global climate change" (better nomenclature, my opinion) is occurring and it's not something we would want to be wrong about ...if we can reasonably modify results to our favor. We need to hedge our bet(s). In reference to the coal I hauled, the Brokaw documentary also stated that China is building
one coal-fired powerplant a week for the next seven years. This was in 2006 and China was the second largest CO2 emitter in the world at the time. We're number one.
One peculiarity of this whole thing about energy and sustainable energy.
All the carbon in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere, one might assume. Sustainable energy fuels such as ethanol take CO2 from the air and it is released back when burnt. So it breaks even. Sustainability.
So what about the fossil carbon in the ground? It seems unlikely that all of it was present in the atmosphere at once. Then again, it had to be in the beginning, not? Releasing it now a problem? I don't know. Maybe. Plant matter must have grown like crazy. Like grain for ethanol. And, "It's whats for dinner ...beef" ...tasty critters that ate plant matter. Mmmm ...beef.
I wonder if the guys that work at ethanol plants get to take a jug home once in a while. I could probably take a bucket of coal home ...but who would want to?
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