Do you honestly care about Global Warming?

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I think any scientist who tacitly implies (or allows political figures to imply for him) "fund my research or the world may end shortly after I retire" should be treated with a great deal more skepticism than usual.

It's true that most scientists aren't in it for the money. But many of the things they are in it for can also be satisfied by government attention and funding.

[Neuge]

The idea that scientists are in it for the money is falicious. I have the most valuable undergraduate degree, but chose to pursue further study. My eye research is on the cutting edge and I'm proud of that, but it's far from scientific funding. There are many scientists in the same situation as me that can hardly be considered to be "in it for the money."

[Metric]

The point is that funding may be required at some point for you to pursue that cutting edge research you want so badly to do (and recieve recognition for). How you spin your proposal vs. how your competitor spins his proposal for the same money is going to determine who gets to do the fun stuff, and who gets the massive teaching load for the next few years.

[pokerbobo]

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Hmm...I've thought about this before, but I think it would be frowned upon to say you don't care at all about the future of the human race. The way I figure it, our extinction is pretty much inevitable right? So fighting against global warming seems like a donk sucking out on me: only delaying what is bound to happen. And about the validity of global warming, I forget which organization, but it was recently reported after a series of studies that global warming was more than 95% likely to be a real phenomenon, so I do not believe it is false, the question is, do you care more about yourself or the future of your race? Because stopping global warming will require sacrifice by all.

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LOL extinction from global warming. Looks like the fear mongers have you right where they want you.

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Most of the Global Warming Nutballs are the same IceAge nutballs from the 70's. Now that we didnt freeze....they go the other way and say we will drown all our coastlines....icecaps will melt blah blah blah. They were wrong back then, and they are likely wrong again. the earth has shifted temps up and down for ages. Siberia used to be good farmland,so was greenland. Maybe with the increased population of earth we will need that farmland again and global warming will save mankind from a horrific famine. I wish I was as smart as algore...invent the internet and then become the foremost climatology guru of the nutty left. Pretty soon I think he will perfect time travel (maybe he can go back in time and fix the problem) cause we all know he wont go ahead in time and come back and say he was wrong.

[jason1990]

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This is quite possibly the most retarded argument I hear when it comes to global warming. Most of these people spent 4-5 of their post college years living off of what is probably a $6 an hour 'stipend' earning their Ph.D. only to get an academic job that pays less than an airplane mechanic when they could easily go into industry and earn a boatload more.

Anyone that makes the "lots of money" argument is absolutely clueless.

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Despite the use of words such as "retarded" and "clueless," this statement is actually quite misleading and is dismissive of a very real factor in academia. I am a beginning assistant professor. If I want to achieve tenure, then I must publish papers, mentor graduate students, and develop relationships with other researchers in my field, typically by attending and participating in conferences. Without grant money, that is going to be very difficult to do. Grant money will support research assistantships for graduate students. It will pay for travel expenses to conferences. And it will also pay my summer salary. Without a grant, I will either not be paid in the summer or I will have to teach, thereby lessening the number of papers I will be able to work on. In fact, in some universities, there may not be a guarantee that a summer teaching position will be available. I did not choose this field to become rich and I have no expectation that riches are coming my way. But if I want to stay in this field, then I need to persuade some committee somewhere that what I am doing is more important and more relevant than what my competitors are doing. If I knew that choosing a certain area or direction of research was virtually guaranteed to get my grant proposal rejected, then I would simply be unable to choose that direction at this stage in my career.

[Phil153]

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Now that we didnt freeze....they go the other way and say we will drown all our coastlines....icecaps will melt blah blah blah.

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That's not what global warming predicts for the next 100 years. Those catastrophic changes aren't predicted to happen in our lifetimes.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the scientific consensus before rubbishing it.

[revots33]

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Yea, sure my kids or grandkids may have to buy oceanfront property in Kansas, but how does that affect me?

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I don't have kids, but assuming global warming was true, wouldn't doing something about it be almost REQUIRED of a decent parent?

Leaving aside the argument of whether it's really a problem or not... let's assume for argument's sake that we all somehow KNOW that the most dire catastrophic predictions will all definitely come to pass, unless we make serious sacrifices now. How can a parent just ignore this?

It seems to me that any good parent would make the sacrifices if they knew the threat to their children was real. So either they don't think the threat is real, or they convince themsleves it's not, or some other mechanism that doesn't make them feel like their inaction is dooming their kids.

Again I'm not arguing the merits of the global warming debate, only that saying "It's my kids' problem not mine" would never fly for most parents (I think).

[bocablkr]

Do you own property in Miami that you might want to pass on?

Your logic doesn't work with Environmentalists. They care about the future even if it doesn't concern them in the present.

I am concerned about Global Warming if it can be proven to be caused in part by man and can be reversed. If it is totally natural I will still be concerned about the possible consequences.

[pokerbobo]

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Now that we didnt freeze....they go the other way and say we will drown all our coastlines....icecaps will melt blah blah blah.

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That's not what global warming predicts for the next 100 years. Those catastrophic changes aren't predicted to happen in our lifetimes.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the scientific consensus before rubbishing it.

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Where should I get this scientific concensus..."An Inconvenient Truth?" this seems to be the vessel of the enviromovement to get the masses on thier side.

And by the way...there are dozens and dozens of very well respected scientists who dont buy into the concensus theory presented as fact by the doomsday crowd.

Concensus does not equal truth...there used to be concensus that the earth was flat, and that the sun orbited the earth...there is also concensus in first grade classrooms that Santa exists. Hear something over and over, many people start to believe it, whether its true or not. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

[vhawk01]

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Now that we didnt freeze....they go the other way and say we will drown all our coastlines....icecaps will melt blah blah blah.

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That's not what global warming predicts for the next 100 years. Those catastrophic changes aren't predicted to happen in our lifetimes.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the scientific consensus before rubbishing it.

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Where should I get this scientific concensus..."An Inconvenient Truth?" this seems to be the vessel of the enviromovement to get the masses on thier side.

And by the way...there are dozens and dozens of very well respected scientists who dont buy into the concensus theory presented as fact by the doomsday crowd.

Concensus does not equal truth...there used to be concensus that the earth was flat, and that the sun orbited the earth...there is also concensus in first grade classrooms that Santa exists. Hear something over and over, many people start to believe it, whether its true or not. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

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Yep, you've basically managed to hit all of the "I have absolutely no clue what I am talking about but I sure do love big cars" highpoints. Congrats.