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Re: 'Humans blamed for climate change' » Dinah

Posted by Honore on February 4, 2007, at 15:32:43

In reply to Re: 'Humans blamed for climate change' » TexasChic, posted by Dinah on February 3, 2007, at 9:04:58

It's a different "they," though, Dinah.

The person who claimed there was an ice age in the 70's wasn't a scientist. He was a journalist or radio personality, who misread a scientific study (and there were some scientists who thought there was some--some, not a great, but some-- chance of an ice age sometime in the next several thousand years.

I don't know their reasoning, but if you look at the records of ice ages, ice ages have occurred and receded periodically through the natural history of the planet. So based on that, rather than any undue alternation of the earth's natural cyclical warming and cooling over millenia, there was (and perhaps still is, depending on the effects of global warming on these historical trends) a rather large chance-- although not in the near future.

There may also have been some scientists who mistakenly endorsed that view, for reasons of scientific mistakes. But on the whole, the scientific community disparaged that claim.

What's different today is that there's a huge scientific concensus-- that the speakers are legitimate scientists, of a mainstream and reputable sort-- and that they never said the other thing.

Perhaps no one says, we were wrong and now we're right, and the reason to believe us now, despite our being wrong then is: xxxxx. This may be because the scientific community never endorsed that guy's view. (Sorry I forget his name, you mentioned it, Lowell something?)

I did read about him, but, despite the currency of his theory at the time, he seemed to have few legitimate sources and to have misinterpreted the statistics in the ones he had.

The reaction to his book is an interesting sociological phenomenon, but not necessarily a mistake that present-day scientists feel that they made.

Honore


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