X-Message-Number: 19269
From: 
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 15:44:09 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #19254 - #19262

Tracey Simon asks: "Don't you think that Global Warming is a
threat? Or do you think that it is overhyped?"  Answer to the first is, 
perhaps, but the science isn't there as assumed by so many.  Answer to the 
second: absolutely. The temperature of the earth goes up and down over the 
centuries and millennia.  CO2 levels have often been higher in the past and 
it may be related to warming.  It's also what plants breathe and they like it 
a lot.  From what I have read, there is significant evidence to indicate that 
fluctuations are mostly caused by sun activity.  What humans contribute to 
the variance is very hard to pick out, but we have been on a warming trend, 
perhaps something like 0.6% temperature increase in the last 100 years.  It 
is very doubtful that CO2 levels produced by human activity have contributed 
much to this temperature increase.  Yes it is cause for concern and a lot 
more effort by scientists to sort out the factors.  I suggest you look at 
Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist , Cambridge University Press 
for a pretty thorough and, I think, objective presentation of the facts as we 
know them today.  I know that Scientific American enlisted a whole army of 
distinguished scientists to try to refute Lomborg recently [now there's a 
global crisis for you!] but he's got the facts and put them together in a 
rather persuasive monograph.  Remember that true science doesn't ride on the 
basis of how many 'scientists' think such and such is true.  It's the data 
that counts.
I repeat, doomsday stuff is bad for cryonics. Fight it any way you can.  
Squash the lies; puncture the hype.  There are many legitimate threats to the 
human race.  Proliferation of atomic weapons is by far the worst; terrorism 
in some malignant forms probably deserves a high place on the list, but I 
also see luddite alarmist attacks on progress in science and technology from 
global warming scares to population bombs, to resource depletion to cloning 
and gene manipulation also as threats to where we want our world to go from 
here.
Ron Havelock 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19269