Why should I give any credit to the scientific community when they have been wrong on climate predictions?
In the 1970s, the big deal was global cooling.
In the 1980s, it was acid rain.
In the 1990s, it was global warming.
Now it is climate change.
Not only that, but we cannot predict weather for more than 7 days out.
Why should I give any credence to the scientists who say in 30 years the world will fall apart?
Don’t listen to anybody. Just look around yourself.
Better safe than sorry, don’t you think?
Scientists have always made mistakes but that is no reason to doubt science in general. Humans have always made mistakes but one of the biggest ones is polluting our only planet close to the point of no return and then justifying reasons to deny it.
Because Al Gore says so. Thats enough for me.
take a trip to europe and you can see the effects of acid rain first hand — after that you should have enough proof for yourself. its pretty cool the way it eats away entire forests and monuments that have stood for thousands of years.
climate change is an effect of global warming. global warming has been around since the 70s. The "liberal" media made a grave mistake by reporting the "cooling" stuff when most of the scientific community was already going in the other direction. that it took 30 plus years and al gore to get global warming into the mainstream pop culture in the united states is purely appalling. common sense should tell you not to drive an suv when you have simpler options.
nobody is predicting the world will fall apart. they are predicting disasterous effects on coastal communities. if you want to see what disasterous effects on coastal communites looks like take a trip to new orleans — you don’t even have to go to a foreign country for that one. i was lucky enough to be introduced to disaster 13 years ago by hurricane andrew. level 5 hurricanes on the rise has already cost our country billions of dollars.
In the 1970s a few scientist were warning of a potential ice age. But what you are overlooking is the reason they made these predictions and it was because of aerosols in the atmosphere. Those scientists were calling for greater use of nuclear power plants to reduce aerosol emissions. It seems man did the unthinkable by thinking of the environment ahead of money and put scrubbers on smoke stacks resulting in a cleaner atmosphere. The problem of an ice age, one might say, was inadvertently solved.
In the 1980s it was acid rain, in the 1990s it "was" acid rain, in the 2000s it’s still acid rain. The problem still exists, but because of scientists convinced governments to reduce the sulphur emissions from coal power plants, and the problem has been greatly reduced but not eliminated.
Climate change is nothing more that global warming is wrapped in nice warm fuzzy packaging by the Bush puppeteers (Google" "Frank Luntz and Climate Change"). It seems climate change sounds less scary than global warming. The problem is as real today as it has ever been and just as threatening. Do you suppose the scientists will be listened to in order to fix the problem the way they have in the past?
But you forgot one. In the 1980s it was the hole in the ozone layer. I’ll let you look that one up under the Montreal Protocol to see if scientists should be listened to.
In the 1970s the issue was global cooling but as the graphs showed something happened and that now appears that the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane and other gases which stopped the cooling in it’s tracks and turned it into warming.
Acid rains is a major problem still – talk to those in Scandinavia who suffered from the emission from the UK.
Global warming is a fact – the only issue is what is causing it.
The climate is changing – talk to those involved in agriculture around the world.
No one is saying that in 30 years the world will fall apart. Act now and the costs will be relatively low – wait and it will cost a lot more. That is the choice of those under sixty. Us oldies will not be around to care.
You give good examples about why we should be listening to the climate scientists.
In the 1970s the few scientists who warned of a potential ice age were probably correct, but we fixed the problem:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkjBsQav0KHTFESR6J_He5YjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20071023103344AAfkZ6P
In the 1980s acid rain was caused by SO2 emissions similarly to global cooling. As discussed in the link above, we solved the problem. Of course, acid rain is still a problem in developing nations with high sulfur emissions.
Global warming causes climate change, so your last 2 points don’t even make sense.
Weather is not climate. Climate is basically the long-term average of weather.
It’s like gambling at a casino. There’s no way of knowing if you’ll come out ahead on a given bet or over a given day or week. But if you keep gambling for long enough, you’ll end up losing money. That’s much easier to predict.
Have you meant to include the entire scientific community? This would include disciplines that have nothing to do with weather and climate predictions… fields such as astronomy, physics, mathematics, biology, medicine, etc.
Hey. Don’t badmouth the entire scientific community based on the actions of the AGW hoaxers. There ARE some ethical scientists out there.
Global cooling was never a big deal, just a few guys with no good data who got more media attention than they deserved (like today’s "skeptics").
Acid rain was a real problem that we solved by passing laws against SO2 emissions.
Global warming and climate change are just two terms used by non scientists to describe the same thing.
Like so many before me told you. Scientists where right and governments took actions to prevent "global cooling" and acid rain (AND the hole in the ozone layer AND other things). Now it’s time for new actions to limit climate change.
Weather is not climate.
The scientific community DID NOT predict global cooling in the 1970s. Apparantly the deniers are too ignorant to know the difference between speculation in popular magazines and rscientific findings published eal science journals.
Acid rain was real–but steps taken by passing and enforcingthe Clean Air act solved the problem–all the deniers do by bringing that up is validating the scientific findings. LOL
Global warming is a proven fact–and you might as well get over it.