WAY OFF TOPIC was: Re: Ada and the NMD

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

If there is clear and convincing evidence that X is a problem and the public
believes that Y is a practical solution to the problem, you'll see political
action. Despite what people may choose to believe and/or advocate, there is
no overwhelming, clear, convincing evidence that the earth is in imminent
danger of destruction because of CO2, global warming, global cooling or
whatever the latest "threat" is. (Remember that for an extremely large
number of species on this planet, CO2 is a *good* thing - hence expect them
to flourish.) Even accepting that there is some real threat here, it is not
at all clear that any or all of the solutions proposed by various advocates
are going to be practical and effective. Hence, you get what we've got -
political ambivalence.

What disturbs me about the whole debate is that you'll have "Liberal"
scientists and "Conservative" scientists arguing positions as to what action
to take based on their political ideology - which makes a mockery of
science. The very notion of "Liberal" or "Conservative" scientists
eliminates the science from it. Too many people start from the result they
want and then go collecting data to support getting what they want and that
is not "science". Too often the general public swollows up propoganda
masquerading as "science" and have not even bothered to question the
accuracy of the pronouncements or even question that it might in fact be
propoganda. How many people ever ask: "Are there dissenting opinions?" How
many people ever say: "I ought to read some of those dissenting opinions to
see if maybe they have any merit." And of that subset, how many people read
the dissenting opinions with an open mind rather than just gathering
material on which to base their rhetoric?

 The whole global warming/cooling thing is being clouded by advocacy. At
best an honest scientist would have to conclude that the data itself is
questionable and hence does not at this time support any conclusions about
the current state of affairs and does not support the conclusion that there
is a real and imminent threat at hand. Hence, "science" is not in a position
to make any firm recommendations about the course of action whole nations
should embark on.

Does this mean we should all go about happily adding more and more pollution
to the world? Of course not. Nobody wants to live in an open sewer. At the
other extreme, should we, for example, go about outlawing the existence and
use of any internal combustion engine? That would have devastating economic
and social impact in the process of addressing a yet to be demonstrated
problem and would undoubtedly result in unintended consequences. (It may
only shift the pollution problem in some other direction that may be even
worse than what you've got now.) So I'd suggest that the question should be
studied scientifically - without advocacy - and in the mean time take
reasonable steps to reduce whatever pollution we are creating. We certainly
aren't all going to be dead in 10 years unless we take drastic actions
immediately. (Remember all those horrific ecological disaster predictions
from back in the 60's/70's that claimed we'd all be dead by the year 2000?
Welllllll....... :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:rPQl7.6990$4z.30964@www.newsranger.com...
>
> Quite true. You won't really find much coherent come out of the US
government
> unless the US people themselves are fairly unified on the subject (which
for the
> subject at hand, they certainly are not). As a former speaker of our House
of
> Representatives was fond of saying, "all politics is local".
>