It was in the early 70's that we were hearing from the same climatologist types of that era telling us that the earth was cooling!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Ah yes, the ole “These climatologists predicting Global Warming are the same ones who predicted the coming Ice Age argument!”. That would fall under the ad hominem argument.
Really. So by that reasoning, DNA must not be comprised of a double helical strand of nucleic acid since “those same biologist types” used to believe it was made up of a linear strand of protein.
Or Quantum Theory’s description of the particle/wave duality of nature must be incorrect because “those same physicist types” used to believe in the separate states of waves and particles described in Classical Mechanics.
Or smoking must not cause lung cancer since “those same medical types” actually used to ENCOURAGE smoking as a method of weight loss.
In fact, by your reasoning, ALL scientific theory is invalid since, at some point, ALL scientists have been wrong about something.
The fact is that sometimes new evidence comes up that forces scientists to re-evaluate their positions. Does that mean that they’re always wrong? No. You go with what the best evidence tells you at the time. News flash, that’s how science works.
But what I find really interesting is the selectivity with which you quote from your Wikipedia link; you’re refuted by the very source that you use to back up your claim:
Wikipedia said:
This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles, and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s.
It was never a scientific consensus. In fact, from my readings, it was a misrepresentation by the media of two individual studies that merely spoke of the cooling affects of particulate matter from vehicle emissions. Hardly a consensus.
These guys want funding & they want lots of it!
The best way to ensure funding is to take a little bit of truth & make a crisis out of it.
Right, it’s a grand conspiracy. So, the IPCC report, one of the largest reviews of the scientific literature, conducted by thousands of scientists and comprised of thousands of studies is a big scam. Let’s take a look what this would require.
It would mean that not one, not ten, not even a hundred, but thousands of scientists from various scientific disciplines had to of knowingly falsified not one, not ten, not even a hundred but thousands studies, and not get caught by their peers. And have done this not just over the course of a few years, but decades. Not only that, but that would have meant that scientists from decades past would have had to falsify studies as well, for a payoff that they would not have lived long enough to capitalize on. You're right, that’s much more plausible than the possibility that decades of man made activity could have any affect on the environment. Because that never happens.
BTW, those emails have already been debunked.
It might be because during my lifetime I have lived through several of these global doomsday scenarios proposed by scientists in the past and none of them has ever come to fruition.
The problem is because we never hear when they get it right. Your AIDS example is an illustration of this. We haven’t seen the epidemic in the US because of public education programs leading to increased condom usage. This was born out of those very warnings of the epidemic from the medical community leading to its prevention and we see in Africa what happened when those warnings weren't heeded. Prevention of polio via vaccine, and the work to eliminate CFC’s due to damage to the ozone layer are other examples of this. The thing is that if you work to prevent something and, after your intervention, nothing happens (which is what you want), then you’re accused of making much ado about nothing. On the other hand, if you don’t work to prevent a detrimental situation and it occurs as predicted, then you’re accused of not doing enough. It’s a lose/lose.
The other problem is being able to differentiate between real warnings from a consensus of the scientific community vs media hype. Global cooling and Y2K being examples of the latter.
