[MD] Bo’s Western Buddhism (was Intellect's Symposium)

[david buchanan]

Arlo said:
Even the most cursory read of "global warming" theories has long maintained that an overall increase in the earth's atmospheric temperature will result in amplified weather patterns (harsher winters and hotter summers), rather than a slow equal warming across the globe.

dmb says:

Right. The local temperature has very little to do with it. Heat trapping gases have been poured into the atmosphere for well over a century and now it's happening at a rate that measured in the billions of tons. That's a whole lotta heat trapping gas and the results are a simple matter of physics. The total amount of energy in the system goes up and intensifies all the climate systems, which are almost entirely a process of moving that energy around. Equilibrium is also a simple matter of physics. This solar energy dissipates by way of things like currents, winds, evaporation, rain, hurricanes, tornados and the stuff we generally call the weather. Obviously, the destructive force of a hurricane is in direct proportion to the amount of energy in it. So what do you think is going to happen as the global temperature rises? It's not about today's high temperature. It's about putting the forces of nature on steroids. 

If the melting of the glaciers and ice caps raise the sea levels then every port city in the world is sunk. If they weren't already at sea level, they wouldn't be port cities. This will happen at the same time that glacier fed rivers, at least, start drying up. People are going fight when things get that rough. I mean, it's easy to see how these consequences could follow from global warming and they're pretty darn epic consequences too. 

I'd bet you a million dollars that there are public relations firms working overtime for big business. There job is to make sure the issue remains debatable. If people believe it's an open question, obviously, they're less likely to demand immediate action. There isn't too much divergence on the issue within the scientific community and the level of real controversy and uncertainty is probably a little better than par for the course. It's a good, working hypothesis. It explains what we are seeing and predicts what we could see based on all the usual standards, or when they don't there is hell to pay and rightly so. But the "controversy" over global warming is mostly just a war between science and Public Relations propaganda rather than a debate within science. It's paid political speech crassly aimed at protecting the client's financial interests rather than science or democracy or anything else. 








 		 	   		  
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