PJ Media

David S,
You see way too many unproven facts and science where no science exists. You may be right, religion is possibly too harsh an indictment of what is really just a junk science. Thirty-five years ago we did have some serious pollution problems in this country, and I was around when the EPA was created to do something about it. A lot was done and now the USA is cleaner than it has ever been. Harmful auto emissions have been reduced by a factor of 100 times below the levels that existed then. Ther are now almost three times as many vehicles on our highways, but a net of 35 times lower ain’t bad. We used to have a lot of rivers and streams that were polluted with toxic chemicals and raw sewage. That has been nearly 100% eliminated. There was a situation where there was no effort made to prevent soil erosion due to land use. We now have relatively little soil erosion. These have all been good solutions to real problems. But now we are saddled with a huge government program that has outlived much of its usefulness. So now the EPA spends most of its resources trying to find new clean up projects where none are needed. No cost/benefit analysis is ever done before the regulations are made even more onerous. We are reaching the point where there is not much of a cost/benefit to more stringent solutions. So, in order to justify the EPAs continuance, they subscribe to any so research having anything to do with the environment, even if that so called research is based on computer modeling and other completely non-scientific methods.
I use computer modeling and mathematical correlations to put seismic data together, but you are right, what I do is not scientific. I leave the science to the scientists in my field and try to use what they discover, to improve my processing of the data. What science do you do? But I digress.
Let me pose just a couple more questions to you and C:, if you will. On what basis do you assert the following? “Global warming has been well established by observation and modeling – but if that’s not good enough for you, just reflect on the increasing CO2 content of the atmosphere. We are changing the composition of the atmosphere in a way that is bound to lead to massive changes in weather, climate, and species survival.” I completely disagree with the conclusions you make in this statement.

C:
Can you also see that humans are just as much a part of nature, and no matter what they are doing, nature is constantly adapting to find that elusive balance you speak about? Do we allow ourselves the belief that we are making improvements to nature’s balance when there has been no evidence that nature has ever done anything but fluxuate on its own hook and regardless of whatever we do? I have really gone out on a limb to even give you that nature is organized in any way beyond the human tendancy to the asthetic of perceptual harmony.
Finally, neither of you get to believe that it should be incumbant upon the oil and gas industry to find the alternative sources of energy you would like. Why should we create markets to compete with our own? Go start your own companies and try to create markets from your own ideas on how to provide “sensible” energy. If you can, and you can produce energy either better or less expensive than the oil busines can, we will all be better off. Get ready because eventually lots of other forms of energy will be cheaper than oil. But not if free markets are not allowed to work.
There is no armagedden on my horizon, but then, I am getting old, eh?