pig

I'll agree with this part without reservation. It's both sides, and emotional appeal has always been a large part of the view of science in the public eye. It is also emotional appeal to hint that people might be smarter than their contemporaries if they can see through this ridiculous new-age science hippola crap, which is the predominant ad pitch I see the anti-global warming crowd throwing out. I dislike both of them, despite my obvious position on the matter as a whole. As previously stated, not only is their nothing wrong with having an emotional response to your work / your world, but it is prerequisite to be effective / enact change. That doesn't make uninformed emotional appeal conducive to effective change, which is what I think you are saying?

First, I'm not aware that the position that global warming is solely man's fault has been stated, at least not here, yet - but I think that the position has been stated that technological practices of man which contribute to global warming phenomena should be discouraged. Perhaps I am wrong. I am aware of the methane gas eruptions in the sea from watching National Geographic / Discovery, and I aware of the possible effect of cow flatulence. However, I am not clear on the exact frequency of these eruptions, the depth at which they occur, nor the exact solubility of methane in water. Do you have a source for this? I am not trying to be a smart ass, but I would be interested to learn more about it. My intuition is that if this is a semi-rare occurance, then the time integrated effect of these eruptions may be much less than the output from factories / automobiles on a continuous basis (increasing with time too), while a single blast may be much larger than, say, the emissions of the automobiles in North America on an annual basis. I am not stating any of this as fact, only trying to gain some perspective on the information which you have shared.

You may not, and I may not - but I'm guessing that some people are. This is not my specific field, and thus I can not claim expertise. I do know that there are experts in the field, and it seems like an awful lot of them are becoming very adament about the fact that we need to pump our brakes a little bit on our emission levels.

Which theories are you referring to?

I accidentally erased the part considering the time scale of data collection for global warming, but I would say that 1. I am highly skeptical that such a sweeping statement is representative of serious research being conducted in the field, otherwise no one would ever be able to publish because it is highly improbable that you or I are the first people to recognize that post-Industrial Revolution data are on the same time scale as the geological formation of the Earth's environment, and 2. As for man's effect on the global warming front, data prior to about 1850 would be useless.

/ps. I felt compelled to point out a couple of typos given your sig. I hope you take it in the right way - not trying to be a dick. Just thought it was funny

edit: //ps - if the Earth is heating itself up, wouldn't that make the drive to reduce our contribution to it even stronger, or else go ahead and legalize herb and heroin and so forth. I mean, if we're getting ready to go ahead and get all paleozoic up in here, why fuck around? Drop the rest of this crap, and let's make operation Get My Ass on Mars a lot more important

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