"Non-believers are idiots", "the argument has been settled", " I am an expert/I make a living in the 'business' so I know", "Limbaugh", "Hannity", the re-branding of "glogal warming" into "climate change", the charge that all scientific evidence pointing to other causes of small increases in global temperature are funded by oil companies and are therefore invalid, etc. all point to the weakness of the "faithful" and the desperation that some in their camp have to force their view of the world on the rest of us.
Majorities have been wrong very, very often. "Scientists" make mistakes all the time. As has been pointed out before, theories change quite often. And being that human beings are prone to error and weaknesses, please someone explain to me why I should put any more faith in the work of a "scientist" who is funded by EPA or any other narrow interest group with very clear agendas than one who is paid by industry? Objectively, do they not breathe the same air, live in the same heating/cooling environment, and otherwise love their families just as much? Could the science not be as clear as the "believers" would have us believe? Might more government not be the answer to every single question?
And yeah, I'll put my money behind a dead guy who who wrote mostly fiction (Michael Crichton) but was eminently qualified in the sciences as opposed to a lifelong politician who was an indifferent student with a major in "Government" and whose life has been mostly that (fiction).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9OSxTy1aU Folks, this is much more than whether some of our treasured seaside courses might become future snorkeling sites. We- the U.S.- is embarking on a disastrous restructure of one of the most important components of our economy, energy. The Obama administration has proposed a budget which will essentially destroy the domestic oil and gas industry as we know it. It has recently taken oil shale off the table as a potentially viable source of energy when the Rocky Mountain region alone is thought to contain three times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.
We are unilaterally surrendering the current 4x advantage of gas production into electricity vis-a-vis alternative "green" fuels at a time when some believe this terrible recession is turning into a depression. Some of you may recall that the huge increase of gasoline prices in 2007 and early 2008 to over $4/gal. was the final straw that broke the camel's back and got the foreclosure mess going. I know that the administration is operating on Emmanuel's "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste" strategy, but couldn't we pick a better time to destroy an important industry? Are we so damned cocksure that the global warming science is so accurate that we are willing to emasculate our economy? And given that the developing world is not going there with us anyways, to what end is our self-imposed sacrifice? Do we really have a need for self-flagellation or penance? Finally, can someone please reference the science which has determined that the 20th century global temperatures are optimal in the thousands of years of earth's history so that Man, without regard to cost, must find a way to keep it at that level?