Global Warming - Is it, or ain't it?

What’s a newspaper reader to do about global warming? Forget it? Punt? Hide under the bed? What?

First off, what’s a “newspaper reader”? Let’s just say he’s a “lunch-bag” type.

So, why care about lunch-bag types, they don’t know nuthin anyway? Well, for one thing lunch-bag types make up most of the 300 million or so citizens of the U.S.!

I’m confused. Do we or don’t we have “global warming”? And, if we do (and I for one believe it), how much of it is actually due to humans’ burning fossil fuels? Apparently even the “ scientific experts” feel it necessary to politicize the matter by “fudging” the data.

At least that is what one understands from the reprinted Tampa Tribune essay (12-6-2011) “Gambling on the theory of global warming,” by J. Gurwitz.

Gurwitz makes cute (tongue-in-cheek?) reference to “Pascal’s Wager,” and therefore one “solution,” since we don’t really know, is that there is global warming and that humans are the main cause of it.

Now, if we come to those conclusions, there is a solution -- it only costs some $37 trillion! (Uh huh)

But, then Gurwitz ends his essay wondering if “…shouldn’t such a costly wager be based on fact, not on a scheme…?

This lunch-bag type can only agree.

Mistakes People Make

It is a typical human mistake to finish reading a book (be it about medicine, or physics, or the human brain, or what-have-you) that the reader finds compelling; it may even appear to contain the “end all” of information on that particular subject.

Almost always, the mistake is the end all part.

That book or essay or whatever, however well written, however solid may seem the information contained, it is but a “chapter” in Mortimer Adler’s “Great Conversation” that has been going on across generations for all of human history.

The “lumpers” and “splitters” among us may try to combine or divide things concerning a given subject so as to make it more easily understandable, or to try to explain its evolution over the eons, but those efforts are merely potential aids.

Another mistake we humans have made through the ages, and occasionally continue to make to this day, is to burn or otherwise try to expunge books, essays, etc. because one finds the information in them somehow objectionable; usually, but not always, according to the local mores or beliefs of the time. When this has happened, valuable contributions to the Great Conversation have sometimes been lost forever.

The Greeks, the Romans, Europeans, other civilizations, have tried to do this from time to time throughout the centuries. It is a human mistake! One does not have to accept anyone’s assertions about anything, but it is a mistake to try to eliminate them.

The Use and Misuse of Information

It is not surprising that "things" which just happen day-to-day are made use of by us humans when they support our positions. But, sometimes such are used inappropriately, I think.

When one's "team" or individual wins a game, it is understandable that one might "crow" a little to other sportsminded friends. But it is often inappropriate to use that win as proof that that team or person is better than another. That's a simple example (thinking here particularly of professional baseball, football and tennis, but it goes for most other sports).

Much more complicated is the situation when one hears speeches or finds articles which support, say, that human energy activities are mainly responsible for "global warming." Al Gore, a political giant of the day, who is certainly not himself an "expert" in this field, has come out strongly with this sentiment on more than one occasion. Of course, he has some authoritative researchers, who conclude the same thing. And, most of current and very wide ranging and expensive government activities (both Federal and State) take this position for gospel, and thus use it as a given, with no allowance (to use a euphemism) for anyother authoritative evidence.

Then there is the "other side" as stated above, also authoritative researchers in the field of world-wide climate change, who maintain that it is premature to wholly take this position, while admitting (possibly even most of them do) that human activities probably do have appreciable effect. So it is not a matter of whether or not, it is a matter of proportion: long term human energy contributions to global worming on one side, and long term natural causes on the other.

There is good evidence, it seems to me, that finds "natural causes" as responsible for most of global warming. Thus, caution, at least, should be used before our political leadership not only takes the former side for gospel, but commits huge amounts of money and policy changes to it.

All of this said, I certainly agree that efforts should be made to mitigate the probable human contribution to global warming, but go at it in such a way that at least allows due credence for the other side's position in this crucial long term matter -- at least until the "real experts" come to a mostly homogenous conclusion.

Lately, for example, even we lay people in this field are reading that "particle physicists" have for some time elsewhere, but also presently are making use of the huge French/Swiss "particle accelerator" to mimic some cosmic energy effects that would support the view, if "positive," that natural causes (in the cosmos) contribute the most to what we are measuring, namely an appreciable tendency for the past hundred years or so for our earth's surface to be gradually warming. That much is not in real dispute.

After all, we are not talking here about ephemeral and inconseqential day-to-day matters such as whose team is better!

Dallas Tuthill, M.D.

Something to Ponder

Lee Roy Selmon died in his fifties yesterday (9-4-2011) of a massive stroke. He was in the Football Hall of Fame and became famous in the Tampa Bay area because of his former prowess as a Bucs football player. During the decades since his active football days, he progressively and favorably impressed all with his humility and honest willingness to serve his community.

I certainly agree with the community-wide assessment of Lee Roy Selmon, but I also believe that he was the same gentleman before, during, and after his football days.

I just wonder if he could have become such an influential icon if he had not been a football star?

Dallas Tuthill