tarquin wrote:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
(3) In a number of cases, Ed has inserted claims
that are clearly
false and misleading, such as his statement awhile back that
"Environmentalists and atmospheric scientists are at odds over the
global warming hypothesis." This statement (which has since been
removed in the usual self-correcting wiki way) deceptively suggested
that the debate over global warming is between "environmentalists"
vs. "scientists," when in fact the debate is between "proponents of
the global warming hypothesis" (a group that includes most
environmentalists and most atmospheric scientists) vs. "global
warming skeptics" (a group that includes mostly non-scientists such
as Ed himself).
it seems to me that most global warming skeptics are from the US.
For example, all the major political parties in the UK support Kyoto.
This is getting off-topic, but one should be careful not to
automatically link treaties like the Kyoto protocol and the scientific
debate over global warming. The consensus that global warming occurs is
fairly strong, but the consensus that the Kyoto protocol is the right
thing to do about it is significantly less strong--that is, there are
people who think global warming exists who nonetheless think that the
Kyoto protocol is not the right way to fix it. This is, notably, the
official US position on the issue ("we need to do something about global
warming, but this isn't that something"), mostly due to concerns that
Kyoto gives developing countries a free ride, and so just encourages
moving polluting factories out of 1st-world countries, resulting in no
net benefit to the global ecosystem.
(Note that I'm ambivalent on the issue myself, just noting that this
distinction does exist. Perhaps Bush is a bad example to pick since you
may or may not believe the sincerity of his views on this issue, but
there are more legitimate scientists who hold similar viewpoints.)
-Mark