Rather than bump one of the numerous old arguments about global warming climate change, I'm putting this here.
This article is a prime example (to me) of how confusing it all is.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/18/last.generation/index.htmlYes, he's got a new book and maybe it's all about sales. But in that link, an average Joe (say, me) reads what I consider to be conflicting statements from the same person about climate change. I don't know if it's the guy or if it's the way it is reported.
Yes I cherrypicked a few quotes, but these are the ones that have me confused.
On one hand, the guy appears to be saying that man is responsible for the current climate change, and we need to control it or the species may not survive.
Quote (any emphasis done by me): But it is his fear -- as the title of his new book, "The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change" (it is called "With Speed and Violence" in the U.S.), suggests -- that we still haven't fully realized the apocalyptic forces
we have awoken and the reality of what is at stake if global warming continues untrammeled.
--
And quote: Now he warns,
human activity in the space of less than 200 years
threatens to re-awaken extreme climate change of the sort never experienced in the era of recorded history.
--
Yet in the same link, he says
Quote: "Past climate change has been more violent and extreme than we have been led to believe."
Quote: He highlights one such episode 11,000 years ago when temperatures in some parts of the Arctic warmed several degrees Celsius in the space of a decade: "
Nature flicked the switch 10,000 years ago. We could be flipping the switch again."
And Quote: In the history of the planet, Pearce argues, the past 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age, in which humanity has established itself as the earth's dominant species, have been unusually benign in climatological terms. But that tranquility "looks like the exception rather than the rule."
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So, which is it? Nature or Man? Nature has been "unusually benign" (his words). Maybe it's time for Nature again. Nature did it in the past (his own words). Who can prove Nature is not doing it now? Why does it have to be Man doing it now? And, if Nature is doing it now, as it has done in the past, who is arrogant enough to think that Man can stop it?
Confusing. Sure, I can lower my carbon footprint on the off
chance it might actually do something (grain of sand on the beach), but it's the preachers that seem so convinced that Man is the culprit and are arrogant enough to think Man can control it that rub me the wrong way.
