Comment Re:Understanding Burton (Score 2) 858
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And not only that: he's an elected representative, with an obligation to inform himself honestly and as objectively as he can.
There is a legal doctrine here in the US called "fighting words". While you are free to say whatever you want to say, you are also responsible for what you say. You are responsible for the consequences of what you say. And if you insult someone's religion or their mama you are responsible for the size 12 hush puppy that gets sent up your keister.
I don't think that's quite right. Offensiveness does not qualify as "fighting words", and insulting someone's religion does not make you responsible if that person then assaults you. And that's exactly as it should be.
Then there is the first sentence of the abstract:
"Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world's climate..."
The very first sentence of the paper is demonstrably false, and
What? No, it isn't!
Semicolons replace conjunctions, not prepositions.
No: they replace full stops or commas, not words of any type.
I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive. The analogy that I like to make is organ donation
You don't need an analogy - parents can be prosecuted for neglect of their children, and rightly so. So there is a law that tells people they MUST do something to keep another person, not only alive, but at an acceptable level of welfare.
I certainly believe that the greenhouse gas theory is real and compelling. If humans do eventually increase the percentage of CO2 to a high enough level it may even have precisely the effect you describe. The problem is we don't really know how high we can go with the gas before we notice a significant effect. And, no, I don't consider the less than 1 degree change in over a centure to be significant.
You made a lot of clear arguments in this long post but this is the key, isn't it? Do you have a citation to back this up? Is it you opinion that there's no consensus among climate scientists about this issue, or that there is a consensus, but it's wrong?
As for the climate getting slowly warmer, as a species we would be very lucky if that is actually the case
Citation needed.
people are trying to use year to year swings to guess what the climate will be like 100 years hence
Which people?
and so far utterly botched even a simple five or ten year prediction
5-year change != climate change.
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek
