You seem like an honest skeptic so Ill address your position point by point. You are correct that climate is cyclical. However, we are not supposed to be on a warming trend. Our current interglacial peaked about 10,000 years ago, and ever since temperatures have slowly been dropping (were scheduled to enter the next ice age soon). Temperatures have risen 1.5 C since pre-industrial times. For perspective, the last ice age was only 4-5 C colder than today. The range of global average temperatures between the hottest interglacial and coldest ice age is about 10 C. Scientists predict temperatures will increase another 3 4.5 C by the end of this century. Here are some figures I posted earlier:
Additionally, we know the rise in temperatures is mostly due to greenhouse gas emissions from (among several independent lines of reasoning) spectroscopic measurements of radiation leaving the earths surface and radiation leaving the atmosphere:
And the notion that climate scientists need global warming to get their paycheck is false. If there wasnt strong evidence that AGW is a threat nobody would be studying it. These scientists would simply be studying something else. Earth scientists arent paid any more than academics in other physical sciences. And earth scientists in academia are paid far less than their contemporaries in the private sector. The implication of climate scientists being paid under the table to falsify their data is that of a global science conspiracy theory.
Al Gore is not a scientist, he s a politician and a moron. Im sorry if his documentary is your impression of the science. The science is robust. There is a 97%+ consensus among climate scientists that human emissions are causing global warming. I'm a libertarian geoscientist and I wish it weren't true, but it is. The reality of AGW is a widely accepted fact in the scientific community.
100% of whose very existence is justified by the theories that you propose. If I were a new car salesman, I'd tell everyone that used cars were bad for the environment. You can throw up all of the graphs that you choose to, but I'm sticking with the facts. Scientists like to scare us so they can get paid. What happened to the hole in the ozone layer that was supposed to doom us?
100% of whose very existence is justified by the theories that you propose. If I were a new car salesman, I'd tell everyone that used cars were bad for the environment. You can throw up all of the graphs that you choose to, but I'm sticking with the facts. Scientists like to scare us so they can get paid. What happened to the hole in the ozone layer that was supposed to doom us?
Yeah, yeah, any scientific finding that conflicts with industrial interests is a conspiracy. Give me a break
Redeux
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I-II, q. 76, a. 1, a. 3, Whether ignorance can be the cause of sin?: It is clear that not every kind of ignorance is the cause of a sin, but that alone which removes the knowledge which would prevent the sinful act. This may happen on the part of the ignorance itself, because, to wit, this ignorance is voluntary, either directly, as when a man wishes of set purpose to be ignorant of certain things that he may sin the more freely; or indirectly, as when a man, through stress of work or other occupations, neglects to acquire the knowledge which would restrain him from sin. For such like negligence renders the ignorance itself voluntary and sinful, provided it be about matters one is *bound and able to know.
*Catholics are bound (required) to learn and know their Faith. A sin against faith (often caused by willful ignorance) is the gravest of all sins according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
St. Augustine, Cited by St. Thomas, characterizes sin against faith in these words: Hoc est peccatum quo tenentur cuncta peccata. "This is the sin which comprehends all other sins."
St. Thomas says: "The gravity of sin is determined by the interval which it places between man and God; now sin against faith, divides man from God as far as possible, since it deprives him of the true knowledge of God; it therefore follows that sin against faith is the greatest of all sins."
Who's ignorant? No, you're just a sociopathic loon.
I'm telling you the facts. Climate scientists don't need global warming. If it weren't real they would study something else. Climate scientists are in no way getting rich off of global warming.
The ozone layer is recovering since the bans on CFCs
Hole In Ozone Layer Expected To Make Full Recovery By 2070: NASA
When I fly, and reach 30,000 ft. And look down, I realize that all those little cities down there don't have much effect up here. The volume of "up here" is just too great. I appreciate your passion. I'm just not buying in on global warming, especially since I have to keep buying more and more electricity and firewood to stay warm. How can you keep touting global warming when we're having record low temps? It's a cycle? Yea, exactly!
I do think researchers lose the big picture of how shifting to "green technology" is inefficient (non-baseload) and expensive. Those things matter to the little guy who has an electric bill. It also matters when you compare our energy usage, to the really dirty plants in China or India or wherever (although China is going heavy on nuclear). You make us less competitive energy wise, and there goes our jobs.
And the expensive thing shouldn't be questioned. When you have to propose a "tax" to get what you want, then it's expensive. And molten salt solar storage is about the only solution for non-intermittent supply, and that has a pretty bad ROI for a relatively short life span (molten salt isn't nice on materials).
So that's the near term picture. It seems like the whole argument hinges on this being catastrophic change. That way the long term clearly outweighs the short term. Maybe that is the case, I just don't follow the research. If that's the case, we should look at nuclear. Maybe that's why nobody trusts environmentalists.
And,
in good company. I am officially a global warming denier and I wear it as a badge of honor you sociopath:
WSJ: "Warren Buffett, Climate-Change Denier"
